Ask John: What Were John’s Picks of 2019’s New TV Anime?

Motivated by my personal fascination with anime, every year I make a deliberate effort to sample as much of the year’s new offerings as I’m able to. Given the present day circumstances of the anime industry, seeing “everything” in a timely fashion continues to largely exclude theatrical anime. So my exposure and criticism is principally concentrated on TV and web broadcast titles. By very rough count, 2019 brought fans around 212 “new” anime titles. Of those roughly 212 new productions, I was fortunate enough this year to have watched at least one complete episode of 207 of them. The five shows I wasn’t able to sample this year were the Preschool Time Egg Car & Go! Go! Atom television series, the Mannaka no Rikkun TV series, the Seaside-sou no Aquakko TV special, and the Waresho! Warera! Shodobutsu Aigo Iinkai TV series. My count of “new” anime excludes subsequent seasons that continued episode numbering from earlier seasons and the fully Chinese animated series Doll’s Frontline which was dubbed and broadcast in Japanese after its initial Chinese web release. Odd exceptions include two seasons of Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai which both began official episode numbering at episode 1, and Saiki Kusuo no Sainan Kanketsuhen & Saiki Kusuo no Sainan: Shidou Hen, which were distinctly different series within the same franchise.

Unlike many “best of the year” lists that recognize titles based on popularity, my list is determined by creativity, originality, and uniqueness. What I aim to recognize are the year’s finest combinations of artistic quality and uniqueness – shows that succeeded in bringing viewers something different and satisfying rather than strictly rehashing established tropes and formulas.

Yukari Takinami’s satirical slice of life manga Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan premiered in 2005 and received a conventional anime adaptation from studio DLE in 2011 titled “Genki! Ekoda-chan.” 2019’s anime adaptation, Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan, however, is an entirely different and unique creature. The dozen episodes were loosely inspired by Takinami’s manga rather than literal adaptations. Moreover, each episode was completely creatively designed by its singular episode director. Each of the 12 episode directors selected his own screenwriter, animation studio, and voice actors, making each short episode a personal work of expressive pop art. The directors were prominent, visionary industry veterans including Koji Morimoto (Mind Game, Genius Party Beyond), Gisaburo Sugii (Night on the Galactic Railroad, Touch), Ryousuke Takahashi (Armored Trooper Votoms, SPT Layzner), Yoshitomo Yonetani (Amuri in Star Ocean), and Akitaro Daichi (Kodomo no Omocha, Fruits Basket), to name a few. Episode animation styles ranged from cute and conventional to highly experimental to even string puppetry. The series’ scenario depicting the daily life of a young adult Japanese woman “freeter” is unique in anime, and the highly personal, esoteric directorial approaches turned the show into a sort of broadcast museum exhibit for the diversity of anime as an artistic style. Furthermore, the fact that each episode consisted of 3-minutes of anime followed by a 20-minute behind-the-scenes interview with the episode’s director and lead actress made the series very fascinating and rewarding for connoisseurs of contemporary anime production but distinctly not a show for mainstream viewers seeking conventional entertainment.

Shinichiro Watanabe has earned a virtual endless cache of viewer and industry faith after creating music infused anime hits including Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Sakamichi no Apollon, and Space Dandy. So Watanabe proffering essentially an anime dramatization of American Idol, transferring the setting to a future terraformed Mars, may not have initially seemed inspired, but Carole & Tuesday proved that execution is able to elevate a blasé concept. A pervasive humanity in the characterizations makes the story feel less like a cliché underdog story and more a hopeful depiction of friendship and struggle ultimately being rewarded with recognition and success. Moreover, in the contemporary era of soulless commercial lite novel and video game adaptations, when so many anime productions feel like conceptual remixes of other anime and so much contemporary anime feels as though it’s scripted by editors rather than creators, every frame of Bones’ Carole & Tuesday looks and feels like labor of love from its production crew. Every aspect of the show – from art design to editing to acting to musical performances by duo Nai Br.XX and Celeina Ann – reflects a degree of personal investment that’s nearly extinct in contemporary anime. Rather than being a show created and broadcast to sell books, CDs, or Blu-rays, Carole & Tuesday feels like a show that had characters and a story that studio Bones wanted to bring to life.

Rilakkuma to Kaoru may not receive the attention it deserves from typical otaku since it’s a stop-motion animation rather than 2D or CG production. But this concise and charming series delivers everything viewers want from anime. The ostensible slice-of-life show includes a sprinkling of world-weary cynicism and satire, some emotionally wrenching melodrama, amusing slapstick comedy, and a subtle degree of surreal oddity. Like the best iyashikei anime, the show is a pleasant respite from stress and anxiety. Yet at the same time the show encourages viewers to be thoughtful and considerate of themselves and the surrounding people in their lives. The show’s pace, episode length, and number of episodes were likely determined in part by the challenges of the show’s physical production. However, the show’s pace and length also feel precisely appropriate, giving the series just enough time to breath without ever feeling pointless. The show makes a fine thematic and tonal sibling to the popular Aggressive Retsuko satirical mascot anime.

Since 1997’s Shoujo Kakumei Utena, following through Mawaru Penguindrum and Yurikuma Arashi, each new anime series from creator/director Kunihiko Ikuhara is anticipated as a monument, an artistic installation. This year’s Sarazanmai lived up expectations, both good and bad. Like Ikuhara’s prior original anime, Sarazanmai relies on a degree of formula and redundancy. Since helming Sailor Moon, Ikuhara has been reacting and remolding the magical transforming with cute animal mascot trope to debatable success. “Success” may be personally defined by how receptive the individual viewer is to Ikuhara’s particular style of opaque weirdness. Much like Mawaru Penguindrum and Yurikuma Arashi, Sarazanmai can be accused of being overly convoluted and underdeveloped or underexplained. But like his prior original anime, Sarazanmai is also an explosion of creative excess and whimsy. Sarazanmai playfully takes a concept from traditional Japanese folklore and extracts it (no pun intended) to a graphic extent no one could have expected. Much of Sarazanmai is underdeveloped. It’s a show that distinctly feels as if it should have been twice its length. But despite its flaws the show is so strangely unique, creative, and interesting that there’s literally no other anime quite like it.

Having now discussed my selections of “best” of the year, I still want to recognize an additional few runners-up.

Shounen action anime have been a staple since, arguably, 1984. And in the past decade or more shounen action shows have increasingly become stylistically and tonally redundant. But surprisingly a few breakouts premiered this year. Kimetsu no Yaiba, based on the ongoing manga by Koyoharu Gotoge, is undeniably one of the biggest hits of the year for two valid reasons. While the scripting periodically succumbs to the weaknesses typical of the genre, including arbitrary moments of character helplessness, left-field plot revelations, and characterizations intended to achieve impact rather than narrative coherency, it also remembers to adhere to the formula of shounen character development that many other shows forget. For the most part, protagonist Tanjiro begins the series weak, and he grows stronger naturally through experience and hardship rather than ridiculous, unpredicated plot twists. Not every plot revelation always feels natural, but more than many other contemporary shounen adventure shows, Kimetsu no Yaiba feels as though it has a narrative plan in place, that it’s not literally making up its story spontaneously as it goes. The show’s other great strength is its exceptional theatrical quality animation by Ufotable, a studio with a number of television productions in its catalog but best known for its theatrical anime productions. A phenomenal visual style coupled with unusually strong and elaborate animation for a TV series make Kimetsu no Yaiba visually superb.

Mushi Pro’s 1969 Dororo television series was excellent for its era. Studio MAPPA’s 2019 remake begins as a faithful adaptation, gradually evolving into its own unique rendition of the story. Tezuka’s Dororo story is intrinsically tragic. Screenwriter Yasuko Kobayashi’s adaptation retains all of the morose tragedy while adding a strong element of moral ambiguity that makes the show’s exceptionally animated bloody supernatural horror action even more gripping. The 2019 anime wholeheartedly embraces and illustrates Nietzsche’s assertion from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster.”

David Production’s adaptation of Atsushi Okubo’s En’En no Shouboutai is largely the anime that Bones’ Soul Eater should have been. Particularly Okubo’s Soul Eater and En’En no Shouboutai manga have a Tim Burton-esque extensive outre visual design. The 2008 Soul Eater anime excised much of the visual creativity of the original manga. Thankfully, the En’En no Shouboutai adaptation does not. So En’En no Shouboutai exhibits an almost breathtaking visual creativity frequently rendered by lush animation quality. In addition, especially the series’ second half applies creative speculation to marvelous effect, extending scientific theories to fanciful extremes for the sake of creating exciting, figuratively plausible plot twists. However, valid argument has been made that the pacing in especially the first dozen episodes is inexcusably and inexplicably rushed. Far less valid are the accusations of sexism and female objectification. Fan service in this show is no more severe than in any other comparable shounen anime.

The 2008 Ookami to Koushinryou television anime is routinely cited as an exemplar of anime about the principles of finance and business; however, ironically much of this year’s Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen is actually a more intricate and extensive look at mercantile trading despite being principally a series about reading. Further ironic, despite being a show ostensibly in the vein of Bungaku Shoujo – a show about a girl who devours books – the protagonist of Honzuki no Gekokujou suffers through the entire first season unable to access or read any books. The “isekai” slice-of-life drama about an exceptionally knowledgeable child attempting to introduce literacy into a world without it does have some flaws. The story very conveniently skips large spans of time while presuming that nothing at all occurred during those periods. In effect, for dramatic effect the protagonist learns details about her new world which she logically should have learned much earlier in her routine life. The show has been criticized for being boring, but it’s precisely the slow paced depiction of an alternate reality and the tedious, trial and error effort the protagonist marches through that make the show unique and interesting. Furthermore, despite having plenty of foreshadowing, the first season climax feels both a bit uncharacteristically hyperbolic and simultaneously underwhelming as viewers discover that the entire 14-episode first season is largely just a prologue that introduces the story’s characters and setting.

Literally, figuratively, and thematically Beastars seems to be a show about half-measures. The show’s theme appears to be the principle that everything should be in moderation: too little or too much of anything results in negative consequences. If the series had starred human characters, it likely would have been a mundane and forgettable exercise. Emphasizing the characters as humanoid animals with inherently animalistic attributes adds a significant altering characteristic to the show. The story suddenly becomes not about clashing personalities and rival cliques but rather conflicts of existential nature. The characters have to struggle to overcome not only their feelings but also their feral animal instincts, thereby adding a unique narrative angle. However, a recurring problem within the show is characters and story threads that appear and disappear arbitrarily. For example, the first episode clearly suggests a malicious potentially supernatural malefactor, and the plot point gets immediately dropped and practically never addressed again.

The 2019 Fruits Basket remake and Mix ~Meisei Story~ are both commendable and compelling productions. But literally and figuratively they’re shows that viewers have seen before.

My working list of 2019’s broadcast anime premieres:

7SEEDS [Netflix anime]
ACTORS -Songs Connection-
Africa no Salaryman
Aggressive Retsuko 2nd Season [Netflix anime]
Ahiru no Sora
Aikatsu on Parade!
Ame-iro Cocoa: Side G
Ani ni Tsukeru Kusuri wa Nai! 3
Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo.
Araiya-san! Ore to Aitsu ga Onnayu de!?
Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou
Assassins Pride
Azur Lane
B Rappers Street
Babylon
Bakugan: Battle Planet
Bakumatsu Crisis
Bananya: Fushigi na Nakamatachi
BanG Dream! 2nd Season
Beastars
BEM
Bermuda Triangle: Colorful Pastrale
Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai
Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai! 2nd season
Boogiepop wa Warawanai
B-Project: Zecchou?Emotion
Business Fish
Cardfight!! Vanguard: Zoku Koukousei-hen
Carole & Tuesday
Chihayafuru 3
Chokotto Anime Kemono Friends 3
Chou Kadou Girl ?: Amazing Stranger
Choujigen Kakumei Anime Dimension High School
Choujin Koukousei-tachi wa Isekai demo Yoyuu de Ikinuku you desu!
Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy
Circlet Princess
Cop Craft
Date A Live III
Dia no Ace act II
Domestic na Kanojo
Dororo
Doukyonin wa Hiza, Tokidoki, Atama no Ue.
Dr.STONE
Duel Masters!!
Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru?
Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru no Darou ka II
Egao no Daika
Egg Car
Endro~!
En’en no Shouboutai
Ensemble Stars!
Fairy Gone
Fate/Grand Order: Zettai Majuu Sensen Babylonia
Fight League Gear Gadget Generators
Fruits Basket (2019)
Fukigen na Mononokean: Tsuzuki
Girly Air Force
Given
Go! Go! Atom
Go-toubun no Hanayome
Granbelm
GRANBLUE FANTASY The Animation Season 2
Grimms Notes The Animation
Gundam Build Fighters: Re:RISE [web anime]
Gunjou no Magmel
Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine
Hakata Mentai! Pirikarako-chan
Hataage! Kemono Michi
Hataraku Saibou: Kaze Shoukougun
High School Star Musical season 3
High Score Girl II
Hitoribocchi no OO-Seikatsu
Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen
Hora, Mimi ga Mieteru yo! season 2
Hoshiai no Sora
Houkago Saikoro Club
Hulaing Babies
Idolish 7 Vibrato [web anime]
Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls Gekijou Climax Season
Ikkitousen Western Wolves
Isekai Cheat Magician
Isekai Quartet
Iya na Kao Sarenagara Opantsu Misete Moraitai 2 [web anime]
Jimoto ga Japan
Joshi Kausei
Joshikousei no Mudazukai
Kabukichou Sherlock
Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai ~Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen~
Kaiju Step Wandabada [web anime]
Kakegurui××
Kanata no Astra
Kandagawa Jet Girls
Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san 2
Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e
Kawaikereba Hentai demo Suki ni Natte Kuremasu ka?
Kedama no Gonjiro
Keishichou Tokumu-bu Tokushu Kyouaku-han Taisaku-Shitsu Dai-Nana-ka -Tokunana-
Kemono Friends 2
Kemurikusa
Kengan Ashura [Netflix anime]
Kenja no Mago
Kidou Senshi Gundam: The Origin – Zenya Akai Suisei
Kimetsu no Yaiba
KING OF PRISM -Shiny Seven Stars-
Kochoki ~Wakaki Nobunaga~
Kono Oto Tomare!
Konoyo no Hate de Koi o Utau Shoujo Yu-no
Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai
Lalala Lala-chan: Lala to Mai ni Chi
Levius [Netflix]
Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note
Lupin III: Goodbye Partner
Lupin III: Prison of the Past
Machikado Mazoku
Mahou no Lumitear
Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka
Mairimashita! Iruma-kun
Manaria Friends
Manga de Wakaru! FGO [TV special]
Mannaka no Rikkun
Maou-sama, Retry!
Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin
Meiji Tokyo Renka
Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai
Mini Toji
Mini Yuri [web anime]
Miru Tights [web anime]
Mix
Mob Psycho 100 II
Mono no Kami-sama Cocotama [web anime]
Mugen no Juunin -Immortal- [web anime]
Naka no Hito Genome [Jikkyouchuu]
Namu Amida Butsu! -Rendai Utena-
Nanatsu no Taizai: Kamigami no Gekirin
Nande Koko ni Sensei ga!?
Neko no Nyan Gogh
NHK Virtual Nodo Jiman
No Guns Life
Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma
Nullpet
OBSOLETE [web anime]
Odoru Mowai-kun
Ojamajo Doremi: Owarai Gekijou [web anime]
One Punch Man second season
Ore wo Suki nano wa Omae dake ka yo
Otona no Bouguya-san (rimen) [web anime]
Papa Datte, Shitai
Pastel Memories
Persona 5 TV specials
Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode Oracle
Pocket Monsters (2019)
Pop Team Epic special
Psycho-Pass 3
Radiant 2nd Season
Re:Stage! Dream Days?
Revisions
Rifle is Beautiful
Rilakkuma to Kaoru
Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan
RobiHachi
Saiki Kusuo no Sainan: Shidou Hen [Netflix]
Saiki Kusuo no Sainan Kanketsuhen
Sarazanmai
SD Gundam World Sangoku Soketsuden
Seaside-sou no Aquakko special
Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV
Senryu Shoujo
Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san
Shin Chuuka Ichiban!
Shinchou Yuusha Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru
Shiohi Girls Vongole Bianco [web anime]
Shokugeki no Souma: Shin no Sara
Shoujo☆Conto All Starlight [web anime]
Shoumetsu Toshi
Sounan desu ka?
St. Seiya Saintia Shou
St. Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac [Netflix anime]
Stand My Heroes: Piece of Truth
Star☆Twinkle Precure
Strike Witches: 501-butai Hasshin Shimasu!
Super Shiro [web anime]
Sword Art Online: Alicization – War of Underworld
Sylvanian Families Mini Story Clover
Taeko no Nichijou
Tantei Opera Milky Holmes: Psycho no Aisatsu
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari
Tejina-senpai
Tenka Hyakken: Meiji-kan e Youkoso!
Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator
Try Knights
Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de 2-kai Kougeki no Okaasan wa Suki desu ka?
Uchi no Ko no Tame naraba, Ore wa Moshikashitara Maou mo Taoseru kamo Shirenai.
Ueno-san wa Bukiyou
Ultraman [Netflix anime]
Urashimasakatasen no Nichijou
Val × Love
Vinland Saga
Virtual-san wa Miteiru
Waresho! Warera! Shodobutsu Aigo Iinkai
Watanuki-san Chi no
Watashi ni Tenshi ga Maiorita!
Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne!
W’z
XL Joushi
Yakusoku no Neverland
Yami Shibai 7th Season
Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki
Youkai Watch Jam: Youkai Gakuen Y – N to no Souguu
Youkai Watch! (2019)
Yubisaki kara no Honki no Netsujo: Osananajimi wa Shoboshi
Z/X: Code Reunion
Zoids Wild Zero