shakunetsu no takkyuu musume

a classic "our group of quirky but loveable protagonists goes up against a crew of certifiably-insane psychos in battle to the death for the regional championship" high school sports show. also, all of the girls seem to be getting off on ping pong, i mean what is all that "i must get DOKI DOKI off of playing super hard against this player" business. then there's the great lengths the animators go to in order to depict just how SWEATY everyone is getting playing such intense ping pong. it could be a fetish thing (KINOma citrus always seems to choose one to focus on in their shows), but when i tried my hand at ping pong many years ago my yugoslav coach bato, in one of the rare moments when i understood him through his thick accent, made the dubious claim that table tennis is the best exercise. also: why did japanese schools let perverts design their athletic uniforms for so long? speaking of which, look at that poster up above, it draws the eyes in to the exposed midriff at the center, but then the navel is covered by a ping pong ball... whoever designed it was a true sicko.
one last thing i must mention: for absolutely no reason, the soundtrack goes UNBELIEVABLY hard. i listen to openings/endings pretty frequently, but this is pretty much the only show where i'll also go for the full OST.

madoka

probably the closest that anime has ever come to assembling “the dream team”: directed by akiyuki shinbou (best known as TV anime’s most avant-garde director) with animation production by his studio shaft, character design by ume aoki (best known as the author of genre-defining slice of life and long-running kirara staple hidamari sketch), and script by gen urobuchi (best known for writing a disgusting pornographic video-game in which the protagonist has intercourse with an eldritch entity that looks like a little girl).
one of the most perfectly paced shows i’ve ever watched – it gets through more than other shows would struggle to do in twice the length, there is not a single extraneous scene, and yet at no point does it feel rushed, an incredible sleight of hand. it still amazes how much they got through in a mere 12 24-min episodes. i would be willing to call it anime’s supreme masterpiece.

mirai nikki

ah yes, god is dying so to choose his successor he bestows the ability to see the future using their phones to 11 bloodthirsty psychopaths and reserved, mild-mannered middle schooler amano yukiteru, then has them fight it out in a kind of battle royale/hunger games type thing. a classic premise, i really want to call it nietzschean but i don't know enough nietzsche to be sure.
overall the plot is an absolute mess, strongly reeks of "making it up as i go along", papered over with gratuitous gore and most character's motivations being inexplicable because they are simply insane. however, i must give it credit for being bad in a grand, ambitious way, with constant zany plot twists incorporating every sort of edge imaginable. it really feels like you've been on quite a ride by the end of it, i'm starting to think that back in the day even the bad shows were better. it's not the sort of thing you see very much anymore, a lot of bad shows these days give the impression that nobody cares and even the staff have given up. i actually find myself slightly missing all these edgy gorefests now that every other show is a stupid wish-fulfillment isekai based on a light novel crapped out by some salaryman on his phone while on toilet breaks at his soul-crushing job.
i don't know if this was the first show to do the "yandere" thing but it was certainly one of the most prominent, and probably ruined hundreds of relationships. i also never want to hear anyone say "yuki" again, especially in a plaintive voice. the second opening is sung entirely in the most gratuitous engrish i've ever heard in a show, it even contains spoilers but i doubt any japanese or english speakers ever catch them without subtitles.

bocchi (the rant)

not even close to the best show in its genre (cgdct) but somehow this one managed to break out of the usual audience for these types of shows and into some of the “normie weeb” audience, gaining a permanent foothold in the minds of certain specimens of obnoxious internet memers and discord addicts. my personal theory is that this happened because it had a lot of easily-memeable scenes, specifically bocchi’s brief breakdowns which deployed a lot of creative animation. they were extremely easy to cut into shareable gifs and spread far and wide, just like family guy clips. also, to those same discord addicts, bocchi’s comedic struggles with social anxiety were “relatable”, in a “post-ironic memes about depression” kind of way. me when i accidentally say "you too" to the alaska airlines gate agent scanning my ticket when she says "have a nice flight": gif of bocchi having a seizure and dying
even though i have a whole blog post titled after it, i don’t care for it all that much, i skipped out on the nendoroids even though the sculpts were good, i didn’t buy the manga because i didn't like the art style (though i do like the anime art style) even though they pushed it HARD at kinokuniya for the longest time (the show was a surprise hit abroad so there wasn’t an english translation for a while but that didn't stop them from putting the japanese versions front and center, i guess they were hoping fans who didn’t even know japanese would pick it up as “merch”), and just the other day i deleted the show to make space on my hard drive for a cracked copy of pump it up prime 2. i guess it didn’t hit as hard for me because i’ve never fantasized about being in a band or having friends, but hypothetically if i were in a band, i know i would do lead vocals, with a stage presence so strong they’d call me something like “the demon”, just like shin hae-chul (except without the whole dying young due to medical malpractice thing, hopefully).
bocchi’s affliction obviously invites comparisons with anime's GOAT socially-awkward girl, tomoko kuroki. ultimately, i think tomoko is the more compelling character, bocchi doesn’t really have any personality besides being hideously shy, otherwise she’s just generically nice and canonically has huge honkers hidden under that trackuit (what an inspired addition). tomoko, on the other hand, has enough personality that maybe 90% of her show is just her internal monologue, seething with bitterness and rage beneath her pitifully shy and awkward exterior, filled with incel rhetoric years before that term even came into common usage. you wonder: did being an outcast make her bitter, or is she an outcast because of her distasteful personality? there's the disturbing nagging feeling that perhaps tomoko just might deserve to be alone...

code geass

one question that fascinated umberto eco was why the count of monte cristo is so good, in spite of being objectively poorly-written and laden with tropes and clichés. eco's theory is that such works manage to rise above and become transcendant specifically because they contain all the clichés, deployed to perfection. based on that line of thought, in my opinion code geass is the monte cristo of anime. it has everything: a revenge plot, secret identities, supernatural powers, mysterious girls, fan service, hammy villains, multiple romantic interests, ludicrous KEIKAKUS, criticism of the media, mechas, outrageous twists, and in between all of that they somehow STILL find time for the kind of high school hijinks that anime viewers know and love. it has plenty of flaws of course, like absurd asspulls and contrived plot points, but according to eco obvious flaws also appear to be a necessary element of "cult" works. anyways, i will defend this show until the end of time.

girls und panzer

what a simultaneously brilliant yet moronic concept, this is exactly the sort of thing fiction was invented for. only the japanese could have come up with something like this. fundamentally it's a sports show, but centered around a completely made-up sport that could not possibly work in real life for dozens of reasons, though one that dudes would be guaranteed to go nuts for if it were. this is wish fulfillment done right. the icing on top, in-universe somehow it’s all cute girls who are into it, which honestly makes it more of a fantasy than 99% of isekai. the producers could have rested on their laurels and done quite well for themselves based off the premise alone, but no, they didn’t stop there, they went for it on the story and made each tank battle a thrilling affair with plenty of twists and turns with creative (although dubiously realistic) tactics. exquisite.

death note

i feel like this is another premise that would never fly in western tv. “you write their name in a notebook and it kills people? rubbish, it’s too simple, it’s too stupid, it sounds like a gimmick from a goosebumps book, we can’t do this, people would think we are insulting their taste and intelligence”. i applaud the japanese for making it work, i always enjoy a good battle of ruses. generally they were quite good although there was definitely a couple times that they wrote themselves into a corner and had to come up with something contrived. this, i think, is the kind of battle-of-minds i wanted from the a24 netflix series "beef". i complained about it in an old blog post (and so did sam kriss in a substack), but instead they decided to squander such a promising premise and went all in on a bunch of therapybrained pop psych drivel. regrettable.
incidentally i think this is a great example of a microgenre i've theorized about, the "rules drama", where most of the plot is driven by exploring the full consequences of a set of rules. the death note comes with a strict set of rules which are emphasized throughout the show, and a good number of light's schemes creatively exploit them.

haruhi

by all rights, this show should have been completely unremarkable. i’m pretty sure it got made because the light novel was enormously popular but i can’t imagine why, somehow it takes the premise of “hanging out with a bunch of characters with supernatural/sci-fi abilities” and makes it quotidian. maybe that's the whole point, it's all a big joke on the viewer, you sit glued to the screen closely watching that powder keg of a premise for any hint that it's about to explode, and then the show ends and nothing ever really happened, the show's climax ends up being that scene where kyon ALMOST lays a richly-deserved hand on haruhi when she goes completely off On Her Shit, but of course he doesn't actually do it. or, maybe people really liked the snarky main character who is “so over this shit”, a novel and innovative character archetype back when this show aired in 1976 (fact check: not even remotely close to when this show aired). as they say, “god knows”.
the anime, however, is spared from mediocrity by kyoto animation's signature superb animation, and also for the astounding and absolutely perplexing decision to air the episodes out of order. what could they have possibly meant by that? was it some kind of grand artistic statement, or perhaps an elaborate tactic to hide the fact that the plot is rather lacking? either way, years down the line the "haruhi watch order" question inspired an anon to prove a new combinatorics theorem.
then they went ahead and TOPPED that in the second season with one of the bravest and most insane students in the history of television, the "endless eight" arc. here's the situation: it's been three years since you produced the smash-hit first season, on track to becoming one of the most popular anime of all time. people are obsessed with it, spontaneously breaking out into the hare hare yukai dance in the streets and the school cafeteria. there is plenty of material remaining to adapt, so of course you're doing season two. the hype for it is unreal, fans are frothing at the mouth and everyone on the production committee is throwing money at you to get this shit made because it's a guaranteed winner. your budget is stratospheric, your resources effectively unlimited. you HAVE to deliver. so what do you do? after one "normal" episode, you remain absolutely faithful to the source material and proceed to adapt the time loop arc "endless eight", by producing and airing eight consecutive episodes that are almost entirely the same. when i first encountered it, i thought for sure i had accidentally selected the same episode again, so i skipped ahead one and it was the same thing again. 「きょん君、電話？」
was it merely a cunning scheme to save money by reusing animation? well no, because episode contained brand new animation of the exact same scenes. i'm talking new shots, new camera angles, characters wearing slightly different outfits. each episode was entirely reanimated, all at that same kyoto animation standard. absolutely incredible, i highly doubt we'll ever see a more, er, "realistic" depiction of a time loop because no one else could possibly ever be maniacal enough to risk boring viewers to that extent. bravo!

elfen lied

GHASTLY rigamarole. the kind of show your friend or older brother takes you aside one stormy night and reverently introduces you to as if it is some dangerous forbidden text, thereby inducting you into a kind of perverted secret society. to many raised on a steady diet of disney or cartoon network, it is a revelatory work demonstrating that animation can include gratuitous gore and/or nudity. i won't lie, this is the first anime i ever saw. it's possibly the high-water mark of the peculiar noughties near-centennial anime revival of the old “ero guro nansensu” trend that in the 1930s yielded literary delicacies like edogawa ranpo's "human chair" and, of course, DOGRA MAGRA. the show contains moe and edge in nearly equal amounts. the op/ed are jarring, sung in latin and putting characters into gustav klimt paintings, perplexingly pretentious and oddly high concept compared to the rest of the show.

bongo bongo dogs

early in college my friend dated a girl for all of a month who was obsessed with this show and got into it himself to an embarrassing degree, which led to him trying to show it to me. i was barely able to stomach even one episode, no media had ever made me unironically think "MY CULTURE IS NOT A COSTUME!!!" before this show. also, it bothered me how they did random chibi gag scenes in the exact same style as fullmetal alchemist (same animation studio, i believe). in the end it was all worth it because i was able to pull of an incredible prank by convincing my friend to "tantei opera milky holmes" by telling him that it had basically the same premise, detectives in yokohama, but better (all technically true). every episode of milky holmes starts off with this dark little animated narration about the eternal fight between detectives and phantom thieves that really does make it seem similar, before suddenly going into one of the most aggressively moe OP's of all time. the reaction when that happened was priceless.

evangelion

enough pseudointellectual ink has been spilled over this show, instead i encourage anyone reading this who hasn't already seen it to watch "Extracurricular Lesson with Hideaki Anno" immediately. ok, i will also say this: i believe at the heart of evangelion is the struggle between anno-the-otaku and anno-the-artist, the struggle to create a truly original work, the struggle to recapture the grand narrative (coupled with a healthy dose of the pathological self-awareness of the postmodern artist). at stake: can otaku, the creature of copies, create genuine art? the tentative answer: no...
p.s. liking rei is a serious red flag

bakemonogatari

a better match between studio and adapted work has probably never been found. RELENTLESSLY stylish. probably the show i would have most liked to have directed. (i don’t remember writing that last sentence but it’s probably true)

angel beats

i had a lot of troubling nailing this show down, but then one day i had a sudden brainwave and pinned it down precisely: it's anime LOST! they had to swap out the island for a high school because it's an anime of course, but besides that they both feature a huge cast stuck in a mysterious location that may or may not be limbo or hell or a dream or something. the show had such extreme "based on a vn" vibes that i was shocked to discover it was an anime original, though it does seem that they later made a vn adaptation. the main character's backstory was so over-the-top tragic that it puts many creators of outright suffering porn to shame, and they just casually dropped it as an episode somewhere in the back half of the series. it goes so far that it practically overflows and turns comedic instead.

kimi no na wa

i remember when this movie came out, absolutely everybody was talking about how GORGEOUS the background art was, which absolutely baffled me because i couldn’t remember there being anything notable about the art at all. then at some point i remembered that i watched the most pirated version in existence, watermarked 240p hardsubbed in both chinese and english with a long anti-piracy warning scrolling across the scene approximately every 10 minutes. on top of that, i watched it on one of my oldest and shittiest laptops, possibly an iBook G3. at the time, though, that was the only version available to torrent because it was still playing in theatres and hadn’t come out on blu-ray or anything yet, it was probably some kind of chinese dvd release beta version that somebody leaked. the twist got me so hard that i had to pause and walk around the house for 10 minutes shouting “NO! NO! NO! THEY DIDN’T!” before resuming.

cardcaptor sakura

very highly regarded however the truth is that within mahou shoujo, it is inferior to ojamajo doremi in almost every way besides the fact that the show looks VERY good, character design/costumes are on point and the genuine hand-drawn cel animation is beautiful. besides that, the plot of almost every episode is extremely formulaic and the characterization is so-so when compared to doremi. style over substance, i suppose. i remember reading one rave review prior to watching calling it the “best depiction of puppy love ever put to screen” and after watching all i can say is ???

nanoha

i'm fairly sure this is one of the first magical girl shows targeted specifically at the sizable audience of older male viewers that the genre had attracted. there are a few giveaways, just in the opening: it doesn't include subtitles for the opening song (a staple of children's anime), and oh yeah, there's a gratuitous panty shot in the brief transformation sequence. i didn't actually find out the most notable thing about this show until quite recently (and when i found out i almost fell out of my chair): it was directed by AKIYUKI SHINBOU, who years down the line would go on to direct madoka magica. allegedly when starting to write madoka, urobuchi remarked that he didn't really know anything about mahou shoujo, so shinbou instructed him to watch this show for research, which honestly isn't that representative of the genre as a whole...
as one of his earlier shows, shinbou didn't yet have the latitude to break out his style, so it's a lot tamer visually than his usual fare. its major innovation was introducing significant sci-fi elements to mahou shoujo (mostly beam weapon attacks that had the bonus of being easy to animate) and also tons of panty shots of nanoha, who i'm pretty sure was supposed to be a fourth grader. it really was the wild west (east?) back then.
the only thing i can solidly remember is that there is this absolutely baffling dinner scene in the first episode (starting at 15:22, for those curious) where the animation undergoes a jarring shift in style and quality, to the extent that you might even call it overanimated. suddenly, the line work gains an extra degree of detail and character movements are animated so precisely that they look practically rotoscoped. there's even MULTIPLE characters moving at the same time! what is this, akira? then, just like that, it ends after the next cut, and never returns for the rest of the show. it feels like a fever dream, what the heck happened? i almost thought i'd imagined it, but i went back just now to make sure and it's one hundred percent real. i guess they must've subcontracted that one scene out to some studio or animator that went way too hard or something.
otherwise, the show is really a product of the time, though i will say that the op is great (could just be because i'm a big mizuki nana fan). i'm also impressed they bothered to get an actual native english speaker to voice the "raising heart" thingy, incidentally the same person who does the english announcements on the tokaido shinkansen.