#vanilla blessing

In contrast to the state of the world, 2025 was an excellent year for anime with several entries that have become my favorites of all time. I appreciate that anime can sometimes still surprise me.

Old anime: Mobile Suit Gundam 0079

I group-watched original gundam at a steady pace of exactly one episode a week during 2025 and had a grand old time with it. Whatever you think of the franchise, the first gundam is that good and it holds up as a unique experience that continues to inform anime history nearly half a century later.

1. BanG Dream: Ave Mujica - The Die is Cast -

BanG Dream is one of the several established anime-music-mobile gacha games, but the main differentiable aspect of this franchise is a stated commitment to prioritizing live concerts, and the purpose of all the other media is effectively to layer on fictional kayfabe to promote the real band. The easiest way to think about it might be those Beatles movies like HELP or Yellow Submarine where they played up their actual personas. Other music/idol anime franchises like Bocchi the Rock will also sell tickets to a real concert, and there isn’t much difference between them and this, but BanG Dream seems more serious about putting on authentic concerts with authentic musicians rather than parading voice actors in cosplay, although at the end of the day that's basically what’s happening because they’re in character. Wikipedia claims that 70-80% of Bandori’s musicians actually play their instruments, but reportedly the vibe of the whole franchise is a positive feedback loop that inspires the minority of the actresses in their recent bands to become musicians in their own right to better fit the characters they play.

My take on this thin distinction is that even at BanG Dream’s most generic (read as seasons 1-3 of the anime), the musical aspect can at least be more sincere than something like Love Live or PriPara, because it all comes back to the real bands rather than promotion of the anime or games, and this mentality also extends to the anime team who more or less never changed through the 3 mediocre seasons, but were also given the time to develop their ideas that might not be sure-fire hits. As a result, they might be a less broadly marketable anime/game franchise, but BanG Dream had positioned itself as more easily able to do something out of left field in one of those areas and set the trends instead of chasing them. BanG Dream MyGo did come out of nowhere to the general public, but the conditions to produce it were already there. 

I posted my thoughts on 2023’s BanG Dream: It’s MyGo!!!!! in 2024 and they mostly haven’t changed. MyGo comes off as unpolished at times, but those flaws only serve to make it stronger, it represents a huge swing in a worn-out genre, fighting the trends at the time (although not for the writer, Yuniko Ayana). MyGo weaponizes precise, needling negative emotion instead of broad and easily digestible feelings in a way that other contemporary music anime like Girls Band Cry also tried to variable success, but MyGo proved to be the rare underdog that claimed total control the zeitgeist over its well produced competitors through instead being creatively brave enough to drop nearly all pretense of elements that had become obligatory to these anime, and instead put out something unfamiliar within the genre, but resonant on a less superficial level. The only plate I thought MyGo didn’t catch was the introduction to their dedicated hater band Ave Mujica in the final episode, which just sort of confused me at the time as an inconclusive note to end the season on. Rather than making me excited for further entries, I was unsure what I was supposed to take away from it, since I had grown attached over time to the ramshackle cast of MyGo, and a nepo baby’s theater troupe seemed like a huge departure that wouldn’t include my favorites I had spent the last 13 episodes with. The key knowledge I was missing at the time was that MyGo and Ave Mujica were sister seasons, stories born at the same time from the same team, and I had only watched the prologue. 

This extended preamble was to set the stage for more of a recommendation than a review, since Ave Mujica -The Die is Cast- is best experienced diving into the deep end. This season stomped my predictions to dust within the first week, and I spent the rest of that quarter-year holding on for dear life until I was allowed to exit the ride. The director has stated plainly in interviews (spoilers in that interview) that MyGo and Ave Mujica are complementary stories where they wanted to explore specific themes that they were discouraged from bringing up at all in the more traditional seasons. MyGo was already abnormal by the standards of girls rock band anime, but nobody anticipated just how deranged a team forged in the fires of mediocrity could get when MyGo & Ave Mujica turned out to be their blank check. I agonized over where to rank MyGo on that year’s list, but I did not struggle at all with slotting Ave Mujica at number 1 for 2025. MyGo's animation was strong when it mattered, but could occasionally seem inconsistent or wonky when trying to use CG for realism, in contrast Ave Mujica feels stylistically cohesive, deliberate, and polished. Similar to how MyGo’s rough parts made its message stronger as a whole, Ave Mujica has shed this previous weakness of CG, sharpened its visuals to an edge that uses that same uncanny valley to its advantage and has turned this blade against you, the viewer. It’s a unique, hypnotic experience that anticipates and crushes the next escalation from overwrought sad rock band, all while similar contemporary idol-focused franchises are left fiddling with a dial labeled "Soap Opera" and looking back at their audiences for approval when they're already far too late to the punch, because they've invented a natural predator, Insane Metal Band Anime. Where MyGo tells a relatable story with a complicated but ultimately happy ending, Ave Mujica seems fully detached from traditional notions like character growth has to be positive or endings have to be satisfying. Ave Mujica -The Die is Cast- gives the impression that it is beyond caring about what its audience thinks. You're here for a good time? No, those were the last guys. All the exits are locked, the stage is on fire, somebody nearby is screaming. You either watch the performance, or die.

2. Apocalypse Hotel

Unique take on a post-apocalypse that pointedly excludes the human race from the story, finding a new sense of humanity in their absence. It tackles a wide variety of topics from week-to-week and imparts the feeling that literally anything could come next, or any amount of years could pass between each episode. The tone shifts often but invariably returns to the bittersweet-yet-demented comedy that is also uniquely Apocalypse Hotel. The OP theme is arresting and I never skipped it. This is one of the handful of anime I consider perfect and I could only rank fairly against non-anime media. Easily recommend this to anyone and everyone for any reason. It would be number 1 with a bullet in any normal year, but Ave Mujica happened.

3. mono

A personally-targeted combination attack of Yuru Camp sitcom gags with Yama no Susume animation, I love how it looks, and it doesn’t really get deeper than that. Even considering the bias I really like this anime beyond what makes sense or would extend to a recommendation for anyone else. 

Some One said mono makes the author look worse and the anime team look better by managing to spin an actual narrative out of the scraps of listless meandering ideas that make up Afro’s cutting room floor gag manga mono and, well he’s right, but that's exactly what I want.

4. CITY THE ANIMATION

Breathtakingly animated adaptation of the manga CITY from the creator of Nichijou, might be Kyoto Animation’s most ambitious project to date, entire show revels in looking hand-drawn and digesting that fact is what makes the magic trick work when it looks far beyond what you thought animators were capable of, at all times. Vivid and expressive beyond the manga it’s adapting and enhanced directly by the creator himself, more than worthy spiritual and sometimes literal follow-up to Nichijou, no other anime has earned a “the animation” subtitle this thoroughly 

5. GNOSIA

Out of left field adaptation of a seemingly-unadaptable videogame where you must play a massive number of rounds of a social deduction game against computers. Shuffling a non-linear narrative into a convincing episodic structure and birthing a main character where there were only player choice boxes and a stat system before is pulled off with so little friction that you don’t even notice it. Unambiguously sets the new gold standard for game-to-anime adaptation.

6. Turkey! Time to Strike

Surprise seasonal obsession that masqueraded as a normal-seeming bowling club anime, revealed its hand as a time-traveling historical epic family drama, then made clear that actually all of the science fiction and feudal territory wars were converging into the ultimate point of the story: bowling. The blend of genres and suspicious level of polish was just too odd for me to ignore at first, then gradually developed into something that was uniquely entertaining on its own merits. Turkey also gets props for managing to hide a deeper mystery in its back pocket until the final episode that caught nearly everyone watching it weekly off guard. I’ll always remember this show for making me spittake on frame 1 of the OP, on both OP’s. 

7. Wonderful Precure!

Remarkably solid season of Magical Girls that stands among the great Precure seasons, particularly notable for accelerating in the last third where nearly every other Precure season from the last decade slows down. I challenged Wonderful Precure’s questionable premise of talking dog doesn’t fight anything, demanding that main pink magical girl dog Komugi had better be the coolest dog ever portrayed across all media for this conceit to hold my attention for close to fifty episodes, and honestly they got me, because Komugi is a very cool dog. 

Particular kudos for delivering on the logical and necessary conclusion of the pet owner season by portraying how that relationship ends in gut-wrenchingly clear and specific terms (not Komugi she's fine), emphasizing that this is an important responsibility that it is imperative you understand before adopting any pet. That episode is completely unfair and devastating to watch at any age and it’s maybe the bravest Precure has ever been tackling difficult subject matter. It hurts to watch, but they knew it would be irresponsible to not to include this in a season about pets and pet owners and pushed for its inclusion, leaving Wonderful with a powerful message that no other Precure has.

8. Okitsura 

I was initially dismissive of this sitcom about “what if I liked a girl who had an accent” until I heard it was my favorite shitty director Shin Itagaki known for the infamous Berserk (2016) and even then it took a few seasons for me to watch it for real. The keyword for Okitsura is joyous, it’s simply nice to watch, the jokes are funny, and it sincerely wants you to learn about Okinawan culture with so much enthusiasm that it’s hard not to like it. 

9. Maebashi Witches

Maebashi Witches initially pretends to be a travel promotion magical idol anime, and it is that a lot of the time, but this anime really buries the lead on what makes it worth watching. Apparently the whole reason it's set in Maebashi was because they wanted the setting to be the most ditchwater, unremarkable town imaginable, so nobody could blame you for dropping this show by the end of episode 1. I was only watching this show to clown on it, but it eventually won me over by doing the same thing it was already doing, because the cast feel distinctly like real people, having real experiences, and it doesn't shy away from shockingly real issues that you never see in anime, much less this kind of shallow advertisement - which this isn't, the show is lying when it does this because this town is from nowhere and they are selling nothing, please keep up. Over time it becomes clear that the series this resembles the most is a condensed version of the long-running Ojamajo Doremi, in that the serious problems of these characters' lives won't get wrapped up neatly in 25 minutes, and not every changing moment of their lives necessarily even happens on screen to be mined for easy drama points. Maebashi Witches has a bizarrely high level of care put into the writing and overall look for how unassuming and awkwardly off-putting the CG makes it seem at times, which might be on purpose given the ironic setting. This project feels like someone was given a blank check and ran away with it and no producers paid attention before it aired since it seemed so dull, which let them get away with airing dangerous topics and deploying some of the most intensely caustic cliffhangers I've ever seen, it's a hit of spice in the middle of this shell of an unwatchably boring travel ad. I'm really not sure this show was for anyone except the people making it, but I'm ultimately landing on the side of being glad I watched it. Really would be a problematic recommendation though, you'd need to be a true sicko believer to stick with it long enough.

10. New Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt

I don't really have anything substantial to say about new PS&G, it's more of what made the first season good and it theoretically did everything right, the same team but with more episodes lead, directed, and written by women, increased variety of humor and styles lampooned and rolled into the chaos of PS&G, going beyond in the finale, the best single segment across either season with the Jack Kirby tribute, but it just doesn't hit the same as it did 15 years ago. I have no specific complaints, only compliments, but I still enjoyed other things this year more. I can only assume my tastes either improved or degraded to make me overall not as impressed with what is essentially the perfect follow-up to Panty and Stocking. It's possible that in a post-Pop Team Epic world a weaker drug just doesn't hit the same as the hard stuff.

This list is coming out in July 2024 because I needed to finish mygo first and also I needed several more months to write it that's my excuse

#1 Uma Musume: Pretty Derby - ROAD TO THE TOP

In order to explain why I put a gacha mobile game anime adaptation in the #1 rank I need to explain why Uma Musume Pretty Derby had a bad start. There was a flash of wild inspiration in the core concept, that this is a place where real world racehorses are, instead of awkward animals, awkward two-legged girls who do a victory song and dance when they win, and it accommodates this absurd gimmick in every part of their setting with humorously large phones and earmuffs and carrot burgers, but it lacked the confidence that this premise was funny enough on its face and frequently dumped dramatically less good comedy on top of a basic sports anime formula. There was a spark of something fun there, but it was ultimately covered up by too many bits that were tedious and unremarkable, and the anime didn't stand out from other sports anime in execution. Thankfully, Uma Musume Season 2 got a strong upgrade in animation and began to prioritize the simple but effective drama of competitive running, building a more coherent narrative around the real-life events that happened to these horses. Most importantly, it took itself more seriously (which is much funnier) and steadily accumulated memorable moments and running bits, then paid off everything in the bombastic final episodes that sprinted to the top of my 2021 anime list.

Uma Musume: Road To The Top further refines the formula of Uma Musume Season 2 into four lighting-quick special episodes with no wasted time and even more commitment to the bit that anime girls yelling their heads off while running is simultaneously thrilling and really, really funny. Road To The Top is pure gas the whole time, entirely composed of over-the-top highlights, and utterly confident that it can go as hard as possible on tragic drama and ferocious action, buoyed by the fact that all of this is inherently hilarious no matter what they do.

The 2024 horse movie Uma Musume: Pretty Derby - BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA seems to have inherited this momentum and accelerated to ludicrous speeds, so it's my most anticipated anime and I need it as soon as possible. There's something to the fictionalized drama Uma Musume as a franchise has built on obsessively accurate results of horse races that is compelling in its authenticity, enabling Studio KAI to capture the feeling of the messy but true stories that get passed down naturally and retold among fans of any sport, but starring anime horse girls with profoundly stupid names. This is the highest compliment I can give in the sports genre.

None of this bizarre franchise should work on paper, but it does anyway, its momentum keeps growing, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

#2 BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!!

BanG Dream MyGO!!!!! doesn't come up in the first page of results of any anime database when you start typing the title, it's something like the 4th or 6th entry in the BanG Dream gacha mobile game anime franchise, none of the other seasons are particularly notable aside from putting SANZIGEN on the map as one of the two rock-solid CG anime studios; the point is nobody really expected a lot from this show. MyGO!!!!! has the same core staff from the other seasons, it even shares some of the same characters as other seasons (although it's intended to be watched standalone). However, despite everything being stacked against it, MyGO!!!!! forced its way into many top 10 anime lists by word of mouth, where it was praised widely for its exceptionally powerful writing and lyrics, strikingly competent CG animation, and unique style that could only be pulled off on a TV schedule by a team that was supremely confident in their ability to execute the previous two things.

The personalities that make up the titular wildly dysfunctional band range from deeply unpleasant to generally infuriating, but MyGO!!!!! strikes a careful balance, endearing them as people without giving an inch in portraying how frankly awful they are to each other. Seeing these messy, manipulative musicians clash, break up, and unwillingly come together again over the course of the season reaches heights of drama I've rarely seen before, it's as though you're watching a house made entirely out of tires burn down.

The way the show's tangled relationships converge around the immovable object Tomori, who's inability to read a room or pick up on signals just so happens to cut through their collective drama like a hot knife through butter, is such a compelling way to utilize a character unambiguously on the spectrum that I haven't stopped thinking about it and I'll need at least a few more watches to fully appreciate. She's the X-factor that makes the entire show work and episode 3 rigidly forcing you to inhabit her first-person worldview isn't only a directing stunt uniquely suited to CG, it's a blunt declaration of the core mission of MyGO!!!!!.

Halfway through 2024, everyone's talking up different band anime about girls who are more than friends, but MyGO!!!!! will be known forever as the definitive band anime about girls who are closer to mortal enemies.

#3 Pluto

Pluto's my favorite manga and the anime took so long to come out we thought it was fake. My only major complaint is that the CG is unmistakably strange and evokes the feeling of observing an alternate history of animated special effects development that is more goofy and endearing than bad, but it's a consistent distraction from the all-timer material.

#4 Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

Totally unexpected drop on Netflix in the middle of a season, this caught me off guard and handed me a full platter of New Scott Pilgrim which I didn't know I was ravenously hungry for.

#5 Oshi no Ko

I adore the manga for Oshi no Ko, especially the more sicko it gets, but the anime is objectively better thanks to smart pacing decisions, an unreasonably powerful character designer, and better planning than most seasonal anime (everyone knew this would hit like an isekai truck so they just didn't stop after S1). S2 is airing now and it's already powerful in the ways I just said.

2022 in anime was a year of many known quantities, but what really ended up sticking out were the shows few saw coming before they took the world by storm, and before we knew it, everyone was watching a guitar-playing pink blob with severe anxiety while drawing her band on every album cover ever made. 2022 was the year I watched a new Gundam for the first time, I experienced unforgettable trash gems like Pride of Orange, ESTAB-LIFE, and Extreme Hearts, and I was let down more by the wasted potential of the Biscuit Hammer anime than any anime I've ever watched, easily. All considered, this year was unusually good on average for the shows I finished, so I ended up with a glut of series I wanted to put on this list that I had to cut down for time. I would make this list longer, but you know, then it might come out in 2024.

Top 10 in order:

Cyberpunk Edgerunners - Studio TRIGGER's take on the world of Cyberpunk 2077 was an unexpected contender - it was announced so long ago I sort of forgot about it, I wasn't expecting much from the batch release of a Netflix-Trigger anime after BNA's messy release, I underestimated the potential of Cyberpunk 2077 as a setting after the very public trash fire of the video game, and it should have been overshadowed by the next thing after a quick Netflix dump in the middle of a season. Should have had its lunch eaten by the similarly edgy violent action of Chainsawman, should have been yet another failed videogame anime, but none of this stopped Cyberpunk Edgerunners from being the anime I enjoyed the most from 2022.

Bocchi the Rock - the breakout hit school band anime of 2022 was also relatively unexpected, although I at least knew it was stacked with talented animators going in, I didn't predict the sheer memetic power of the result. This series shatters the fourth wall over its knee and livens up an already pretty funny manga with demented, free-flowing gags in a particular way that wouldn't work at all without detailed and well planned sequences which come off so naturally it's hard to believe this was originally a (lightly subversive but still) 4 panel strip. The album cover redraws were the best thing to come out of Bocchi and I hope they never end.

Pop Team Epic 2 - some kind of fucked up comic strip but aoi shouta is there? I thought they promised they wouldn't make this

Mob Psycho 100 III - everything I said about the second season of the popular shonen manga adaptation but moreso, it finishes out the series in exactly the way I hoped it would. Third OP is just mad flexing. look how many hands we can draw. Episode 8 changed my life forever. knowing they nailed the landing retroactively improves the whole series for me.

Do It Yourself - original anime by studio PINE JAM, DIY is pure aesthetic hobby-ani with a mildly entertaining cast of extremely animated characters. very enjoyable but may not have enough momentum or things happening for some. soundtrack is another standout by y0c1e but at a noticeably different speed from Gleipnir and Spyce.

Kaguya-sama Love is War: Ultra Romantic - everything I said about the second season of the popular romcom manga adaptation but moreso, it reaches the climactic peak of the series in exactly the way I hoped it would. I'm still reeling from the entire rap battle episode (sub and dub), and can't believe the Starship Troopers ED was real.

My Dress Up Darling (Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru) - excellent manga adaptation, effectively gets across the dangerously horny but strangely wholesome vibe of the series.

The Demon Girl Next Door Season 2 - everything I said about the first season of the popular magical girl romcom manga adaptation but moreso, it reaches an inflection point in the manga with exactly the same manic pacing and blatant disregard for breathing room I hoped it would. out of everything else on my list I hope the most this one gets another season, because it kind of needs it.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Witch from Mercury - original anime in the long-running GUNDAM series which is sort of like Robot Jox for kids. This is definitely the first time I've watched anything from Gundam before it was completed and I immediately regretted not having more to watch as a direct consequence. Half of my enjoyment right now is coming from experiencing it in tandem with the rest of the internet, but it's sure to hold up in retrospect as one of the best modern Gundam seasons. Look forward to a future very annoying post by me claiming g-witch ripped off Granbelm.

Call of the Night - another above and beyond manga adaptation, probably the anime OP of the year. It strongly intensified my longing for studio SHAFT to not be dead anymore.

Assorted Shoutouts

Going by rating number scale rules, Chainsawman and Spy X Family should be here, but I'm not going by rating, I'm going by what I feel deserves more attention. those anime already have too much recognition.

The Executioner and Her Way of Life (Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road) - If you asked me what the most hidden gem is from 2022, this is what I would answer immediately. Irresponsibly complicated and unusual take on the hated isekai genre in the most disrespectful way possible, twisting anything familiar about that tired setting into an unrecognizable pretzel shape. Recommending this is a challenge, because the less I explain the better it is, but nobody would want to watch this on its face. Everyone should watch it though.

Ya Boy Kongming - banger soundtrack and some eye-popping color choice elevates this manga adaptation from average to a certified Cool Time.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: STONE OCEAN - My favorite (not best) Jojo part, the anime greatly improves the readability of the last third from the manga. Tokyo Mew Mew New - It's almost comforting how little they tried to update the love triangle of incredibly shit boyfriends in this remarkably normal magical girl anime reboot. I pleaded for someone to make a normal regular magical girl anime reboot and they delivered something totally acceptable.

Reiwa Di Gi Charat - Dejiko drags society kicking and screaming into the Reiwa era. This is the anime of all time of 1999, 2022 and 2023.

As I’ve been watching Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS, I’ve been thinking a lot about how characters like Ai are represented and used within the franchise. For lack of a better term, these spirit companions show up in each Yu-Gi-Oh! series as a guide for the protagonist, someone they can talk to and confer with in and out of duels. They play a slightly different role than the main character’s group of friends, often sharing a mental or spiritual connection that elevates their relationship to something closer to kin. Ai is one of the most active deuteragonists throughout the franchise, and so I wanted to take a look at all six of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series and talk about how they play into the story and whether their inclusion helps to further the themes of the series.

6. The Crimson Dragon, from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s

The Crimson Dragon is a being made of sacred fire that, along with the six legendary dragons (the titular 5 D’s), fought against the evil Earthbound Immortals and sealed them in the Nazca Lines. He is the source of all the main characters’ powers, which include energy manipulation, psychic powers, and creating miracles. Although he is the reason the cast gathered together and were able to become a team, the Crimson Dragon otherwise only appears when the plot demands it.

When I first started thinking about this list, I wasn’t even sure if 5D’s had a spirit companion of some kind. It’s really downplayed within the series, since all of the main characters have to share parts of the Crimson Dragon, and it doesn’t really play into the series outside of its role as a plot device. Unlike the other characters in this list, the Crimson Dragon doesn’t talk or interact with the cast, acting more like a guardian than a proper character. There’s no personality there and nothing to real talk about, besides it being kind of a lame design for a dragon.

5. Yubel, from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

Yubel is sort of a weird case compared to the rest of the characters on this list, since her first appearance is over halfway through the series as an antagonist for Jaden. She was originally a magical guardian meant to protect an individual known as the Supreme King, who wielded the power of Gentle Darkness. Thousands of years after this pact was made, her spirit was placed into a Duel Monsters card, and eventually the card ended up in the hands of Jaden. As it happens, Jaden is a descendant of the Supreme King, and so the spirit within the Yubel card promised to protect Jaden from any and all threats. Unfortunately, Yubel considered any sort of friendship with others as a threat to their relationship, and so everyone who dueled Jaden fell into a coma. In the hopes of helping her find the “power of justice”, Jaden sent the Yubel card into space in a KaibaCorp satellite, but she ended up encountering The Light of Destruction which only corrupted her further. Eventually the satellite crashed back onto Earth and Yubel was freed, allowing her to take revenge against Jaden for betraying her. She does this by torturing all of his friends via Shadow Duels and eventually doing the same to Jaden, equating their shared pain as a sort of love. But, thanks to Jaden’s incredibly large heart, he is able to eventually forgive Yubel and accept her, which allows the two of them to fuse together and free Yubel from The Light of Destruction.

I’ve never really been able to come to terms with Yubel as a spirit companion. She’s an extremely out-of-place element in the otherwise goofy series, to an uncomfortable extent. Between her weird sadomasochism fetish and her overly possessive relationship with Jaden, the whole thing comes off as a strange thing for a kid’s show to do. There’s no real conclusion that effectively explains why Jaden would suddenly forgive her outside of him being such a stand-up dude and destiny-bound to be with her. This is several steps above GX characters talking about “playing solitaire” with their favorite sexy cards from the classic memetic shared video, and I’ve always found it uncomfortable on reflection.

4. Astral, from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZeXal

Astral is an extra-terrestrial from the Astral World, which is a thinly-veiled sci-fi allegory for Heaven. He is initially sent to Earth in order to garner enough power to destroy the Barian World, which is a thinly-veiled sci-fi allegory for Hell, but is intercepted partway and attaches himself to Yuma Tsukumo, a third-rate duelist with big dreams. When he reaches Earth, Astral’s memories scatter in the form of 100 “Number” cards, and now he’ll need to help Yuma learn how to duel so that they can win back all of the Numbers and Astral can complete his mission.

Astral’s just a real weenie, and a pretty boring character overall. His only narrative purpose for a majority of the series is to bail Yuma out when he makes a bad play, and to talk about how weird human customs are compared to his pseudo-angel alien customs. And there was that one time Astral felt so betrayed when Yuma kept a secret from him that he went crazy and almost killed the both of them via a corrupted fusion. It’s nice that he’s part of the show from the beginning so the plot starts right away, but that ends up leading to another problem, thanks to the Number card gimmick. Because only Number cards can destroy other Number cards in a duel, the way that he’s integrated ends up making almost every duel go the exact same way, all the way up to the very end of the series.

3. Yuto, from Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V

Yuto is one of three characters from an alternate dimension, called the Xyz Dimension, that shares the same look and build of protagonist Yuya Sakaki, who is from the Standard Dimension. Initially believed to be a villain, the truth is eventually revealed that he comes from a world that was decimated by an army from another alternate dimension, the Fusion Dimension, and he’s come to the Standard Dimension to get his revenge on the Fusion invaders. Although he ends up dying in a duel, his soul fuses with Yuya’s, and so he begins to explain more about this dimensional war to Yuya, in the hopes that Yuya can succeed where he failed in stopping the Fusion forces.

Yuto isn’t the most exciting or memorable companion, but I think he’s ultimately one of the ones that was best integrated within his franchise. From his original role as an uneasy antagonist to his revival as a spirit companion for Yuya, he consistently helped push the story forward and provide background information on the main conflict as it became important, which helped further to expand the world and the narrative as a whole. While I think all of the Yuya clones in Arc-V ultimately contributed to the story, Yuto was the one who solidified how the series was going to develop.

His Phantom Knights deck is also cool as hell.

2. Atem/Pharaoh, from Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters

Atem is the spirit of a pharaoh who ruled in ancient Egypt, remembered for stopping a great catastrophe that threatened the future of the entire world. His soul was sealed away in one of the Millennium Items, a set of ancient artifacts that granted great powers to their wielders, and locked away his memories so that they couldn’t be used to threaten the world ever again. Thousands of years later, after his grandfather excavated the Millennium Puzzle, Yugi Moto completed the puzzle, and the pharaoh’s soul was fused into Yugi’s body. Although their relationship was shaky at the beginning as they learned how to handle their shared body, eventually the two were able to work together to help the pharaoh recover his memories and pass on to the next life.

Atem, the OG companion and (in)arguably a more relevant character than Yugi after the first season. While in some ways he stole the spotlight whenever arcs weren’t directly centered on the pharaoh, his mysterious connection to the game of Duel Monsters and the expansive world of Yu-Gi-Oh! was interesting to watch develop and grow over the series. He definitely has the best rapport with his series’ cast, and I like the way the relationship between Atem and Yugi was built up, all the way to the end. The original series was really well connected, and the bond between Atem and Yugi was a big part of that.

1. Ai, from Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS

Ai is an Ignis-class artificial intelligence, meaning that he has free will, and he lived along with other Ignis AIs in a digital world called the Cyverse. After a shadow organization known as the Knights of Hanoi tried to capture the Cyverse and its power, Ignis was able to steal information from the Cyverse and hide its data within his AI body. Since then, he’s been hunted by the Knights of Hanoi, as well as SOL Technologies, a company that had used the Cyverse to power its virtual reality Duel Monsters program, VRAINS. After a widescale attack on VRAINS by the Knights of Hanoi, the hacker protagonist of the series Yusaku Fujiki was able to capture Ai, only knowing that he would act as a trump card during his fights against the Knights of Hanoi. So begins the shaky friendship of Yusaku and Ai.

I guess this is a little unfair since the series isn’t over, and the true nature of this character has yet to be revealed, and he’s an AI, but Ai has been the only source of whimsy in a series that otherwise lacks it. VRAINS is a very self-serious series with some heavy themes and crushing implications within its narrative, and Ai plays an important role to help keep the series fun with his flippant attitude, providing some well-timed bits of comedy. He’s very much the comic to Yusaku’s straight man, creating this fun dynamic between the two of them, both in and out of duels. Ai is definitely the most like a mascot of any character in this list, as a lot of his interaction with the world is through exaggerated reactions and mischief that Yu-Gi-Oh! as a franchise has never really leaned into. I also think even the way he interacts with Yusaku within duels is interesting, since granting Playmaker the ability to pull new cards from raw data storms helps keep the main character’s deck fresh and exciting from duel to duel.

I was lucky enough to be able to watch multiple anime movies in a theater this year, with releases such as Your Name, In This Corner of the World, and Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Side of Dimensions. There’s something special about the atmosphere of watching a movie/cinematic experience/film in a theater over the home release, with the limited viewing windows making the experience feel somehow more important. However, I don’t think any of these experiences embodied the theater-going difference as much as when I went to see Pokemon the Movie: I Choose You!.

For one thing, it’s the only movie I’ve been to where I ran into a fursuiter, and multiple fursuiters at that. But more importantly, it was also the only anime movie I went to this year with a high proportion of younger kids in the audience, and it immediately reminded me of myself as a kid, dragging my parents to all three original Pokemon movies and making sure they helped collect extra copies of the exclusive cards for me. While it was cute seeing the way they interacted with their parents before the movie started, what really made me nostalgic was the way the kids were engaging during the movie. When the Ho-Oh popped up on screen, all the kids gasped and whispered “It’s Ho-Oh!”. They turned to their parents to explain why all of the characters in the movie were excited by an Entei sighting, then collectively gasped again when Ash got to meet the legendary Pokemon. The whole experience reminded me of when I’d try to get my parents into Pokemon, and how they’d humor me and try to understand what I was talking about.

Ultimately, while I enjoyed the movie on its own merits, there was a charm to this viewing that could not have been captured or replicated if I were watching this movie on my own. Being surrounded by a bunch of young Pokemon fans who were so genuinely excited about the movie that they audibly reacted to it was a lot of fun, and ended up positively affecting my experience as well. For just a couple of hours, I was reminded of what it was like to have endless enthusiasm for a series and the desire to share that with everyone. In a year full of low moments, having two hours of unadulterated joy was an appreciated reprieve.

Returning to a series after it’s over can be difficult. The hardest thing about reviving or rebooting a long-finished franchise is justifying its existence. Will it find its own identity and stand out? Will it merely feel like a return to familiar territory, with little substance to make it unique? Or will it be so lifeless and misguided as to disappoint fans? Balancing fan expectations and desires is enormously difficult, and plenty of series have landed across the entire spectrum. For every Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods that helps revitalize an old series, there’s a Eureka Seven AO that kills off interest for the franchise as a whole. Nostalgia is an easy sell, but making it feel worthwhile is the hard part.

Enter Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, the movie sequel to the original Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series, Duel Monsters. Twelve years after the last episode of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime aired, Dark Side of Dimensions returns to the world of Duel Monsters for an epilogue to help close out the series and its character’s stories. The story takes place six months after the events of Yu-Gi-Oh!, as Yugi Moto and his friends prepare to graduate from high school and enter the working world. While the final episode wrapped up the character arc of Yugi and his relationship with his ancient Egyptian pharaoh spirit friend Atem, putting a capstone in the primary story, Dark Side of Dimensions is heavily focused on Yugi’s rival, Seto Kaiba. The main plot thread follows Kaiba’s attempts to bring Atem back from the afterlife for one final duel, in order to prove once and for all that he is the greatest duelist. But, as he’s tomb raiding for the Millennium Puzzle, he meets a man named Diva, who holds an ancient Egyptian magic artifact called the Quantum Cube and will do anything to stop Atem’s resurrection. However, stopping the return of the pharaoh isn’t the only thing on his mind as he attempts to disrupt Domino City. And so, one more time, Yugi and friends are pulled into a story of ancient Egyptian grudges, misguided desires, and the ever-present power of friendship.

The movie is two hours long, but a surprisingly small amount of it is dedicated to dueling. That’s not to say there aren’t several duels throughout the movie, there are a whopping eight in fact, but they all move relatively fast. The original series definitely got criticism for over-explaining each card effect, but Dark Side of Dimensions has the opposite problem, almost to the detriment of not explaining enough of what’s happening. Sometimes, effects just happen, with only their aftermath to help the viewer figure out the procedure. I didn’t end up minding that much though, because the time they saved not telling me that Pot of Greed allows the user to draw two cards is spent making the duels look good. While the original series’ duels were very static and simple, Dark Side of Dimensions really ups the ante to fit more modern Yu-Gi-Oh! anime duel standards. There’s a lot of visual flair added and the monsters have never looked better. And while the movie tries to further complicate the game by introducing a new style of play, Dimension Duels, it ultimately does little to affect the way the game is played, and it ends up mostly being used just to ramp up the dramatics.

I also didn’t end up minding the reduced duel time because the more important part of the movie was the story. Returning to the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, the movie helps to tie up some unresolved threads from the original series. It predominantly focuses on Kaiba’s dangerous obsession with finally one-upping Atem, and how his inability to move on from his greatest slight compares to the way that Yugi has been able to move forward and grow long after he parted ways with Atem. The movie also finds time for Bakura and a proper explanation behind his troubled life with the Millennium Ring, bringing to light his origins with the artifact and the way that it’s affected his life, even after it disappeared from him. It also presents a good foil for Yugi in the form of Diva, the movie-exclusive antagonist and his ties to the ever-expanding lore of the Duel Monsters universe. Diva stands as Yugi’s opposite, commanding the same sort of ancient power that allowed Yugi to meet Atem, but uses his for a twisted sense of justice based on a cruel and pessimistic worldview that Yugi denies. The way his new quantum powers mix with the ancient Egyptian magic is over-the-top in that perfect Yu-Gi-Oh! way of blending drama and over-the-top theatrics. While the final episode of Duel Monsters closed the book on Yugi’s story, this new epilogue helps to show how the cast as a whole has changed, or failed to change, since then.

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions is a great piece of fan service. I was able to catch the dub screening in theaters, and hearing the entire original cast back together was a treat. The writing is fun and punchy, delivering cheesy one-liners without compromising the story, and the use of the 4kids original soundtrack was a fun surprise as well. It’s a story that maybe pulls in too many directions even for its longer runtime, but the narrative feels like something that slots perfectly into Yu-Gi-Oh! in terms of tone and development. On the whole, Dark Side of Dimensions makes for a good epilogue to the series. It even brought a new infinite loop strategy to the game, which is one of my favorite things for the anime to set up. Even if it wasn’t wholly necessary in terms of the series narrative, it was a joy to see these characters again and have them go on one last big adventure. It’s exactly what I wanted from the movie, and resparked an affection for the cast that had faded away as the franchise continued forward. It reminded me just what makes me love Yu-Gi-Oh! as much as I do, and I couldn’t ask anything more of it.

-@ChorpSaway, Card Game Enthusiast for Vanilla Blessing Official Network

Merry Christmas!

For the final post in our 12 Days of Anime coverage, I wanted to make a few statements about shows that really stood out to me in 2017 that I didn’t get the chance to say more about. Despite a rough start, I think 2017 was a good year for anime, and I hope it only improves as we move into 2018.

So here are the shows I want to give special notice to:

Little Witch Academia for being a source of pure unadulterated joy in a medium steeped in insincerity. While not always the most even or well-paced story, it’s still one that was fun to watch develop. The sincerity and love for animation packed into Little Witch Academia was a refreshing experience, and gives me hope for Studio Trigger going forward.

Re:CREATORS for telling a story about the transformative power of media and the way it affects others. It was a hot mess of series with some real serious issues, but the message it sends is one I really appreciate.

Land of the Lustrous for exceeding all expectations and showing just what you can do with 3DCG. In a year with one of the most mocked and reviled 3D series in the form of Berserk, Land of the Lustrous really showed how you can use this technology to elevate the source material and the medium.

Just Because! for doing something more nuanced and subtle with a romance series. Although it’s nice to see everyone get a happy ending, I appreciate that Just Because! is willing to show failure and compromise. The characters and their relationships mature in a way that feels real.

Eccentric Family 2 just for being a damn good sequel to a damn good series. Eccentric Family 2 follows a very similar structure to its first season, which can be off-putting at first, but the way it develops its world and characters overshadows superficial problems like that. Not many series feel like they continue past the credits, but Eccentric Family excels at world-building in that way.

Thanks for joining us on the 12 Days of Anime! We ended up writing more in the past two weeks than we did the rest of the year, but maybe in 2018 we’ll try to find a more consistent schedule. Until then, Happy New Year, and sweet dreams~!

It must be a nightmare to watch tournament level Yu-Gi-Oh! right now as a casual or interested newcomer. There are so many cards with paragraph-long effects that you’re expected to already know, so you’d have to do a lot of outside research to understand the level of commentary. Turns can be up to minutes long as combos have become more and more prevalent, occasionally going as many as fifteen cards deep and leaving the playing field completely full. And with the way that Link Summoning, a mechanic added earlier this year, has drastically changed how the game flows, even people who might be coming back to the game would still be lost in all the new rules. But when it comes to the newest anime series, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS, the writing team is trying to make this game as accessible as possible, so that even viewers who may have never even seen the card game before watching the show can still follow it. So, does the inscrutability of the modern game of Yu-Gi-Oh! affect the readability/flow of the show, or can casual viewers glean just enough context to keep up with this fast-paced game?

First off, I think that the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime does a good job of paring down its mechanics for each series, for the most part. In the case of VRAINS, the writers utilized a new dueling format that reduces each duelist’s playing field to seven spaces vs the standard eleven, which helps narrow the scope of possible plays per turn. It’s a great way to still show off the complex synergies of the card game without completely overwhelming the casual viewer.

Secondly, no matter how many times a character uses a card, they will always announce its effect on activation, and the camera will center on the card in question, leaving no ambiguity as to what’s happening in each play. While this decision has led to memetic phrases in the past with cards such as Pot of Greed, it ensures that viewer retains information and improves their understanding of how the cards within a deck work together, regardless of whether they explicitly interact with each other.

Finally, and I think this is what works best for the anime, the card game in the show has become a lot more of a shonen-style battle visually than a virtual card game. The gimmick of VRAINS is that these characters duel in a VR world, where damage is simulated and the monsters physically appear on the field. While this is nothing really new if you watched any previous Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, VRAINS sets itself apart by taking it one step further. Each duelist literally surfs the web on a hoverboard, resulting in dynamic and exciting movement with the environment and their opponent in a series that has lacked this aspect in the past. Monsters actually fight with each other, and their bodies interact with the world in a way that wasn’t possible when only the monsters were virtual. You don’t really need to know the stats of the monsters, even though they’re displayed frequently, because when a wrestler monster suplexes a giant green marmot you already understand how they’re interacting.

The actual card game may be inscrutable to the casual player, but the anime has generally done a good job of simplifying and visually enhancing the game for newcomers and fans alike. There’s a dynamicism to Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS that makes the game easy to follow and fun to watch. I’ve seen more of my friends get into VRAINS without any connection to the card game, and none of them seem to have trouble following the flow of the duels. The anime provides a simple and friendly way to enjoy the game without getting overwhelmed, and the story around it tends to be fun as well.