THAT's Official "Best Anime of 2008" Post

The gift of moe

The post of the title is pretty self-explanatory, but what the hell. I badgered several of the THAT authors into indicating along with me what they thought the best anime of 2008 was. Some of them (including myself) could not contain themselves and split their selection. Regardless, I think it’s a good way to close out the year. I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year, and we’ll be sure to be around in 2009.

Calawain- (Split) Code Geass R2/Kannagi

When I was discussing the idea for this post with Impz I tried to think up what I considered to be the best anime of the year. And I guess it depends on one’s definition of “best.” As jpmeyer has shown us, it has many definitions. Now since this post is aimed at showing you the many opinions of the authors here at THAT, I’ll keep mine simplified and just split my vote into two.

Code Geass definitely qualifies as “best,” as it is the only show of 2008 to earn a perfect 10 from me. However, it earned it more for it’s entertainment value rather than it’s quality, which I discussed at length in this post. This show managed to entertain almost every week, continually making the utmost effort to remind us that in no way should we take this shit seriously. Some have tried to treat it seriously (something that is possible for the first season), but looked ridiculous trying to do so for the second season. We are not likely to soon forget the unquestionable top source of lulz and memes for 2008.

On the other hand Kannagi would be my vote for the best quality show of the year. My favorite genre of anime, and of entertainment in general, is comedy. Kannagi brought together great characters along with supremely effective comedic devices ranging from standard gags to shocked silence. When I first read about the show preparing the fall preview I gave it a rather lackluster chance, and I did not have the faith of some others out there. But wow was I blown away starting with the opening sequence. Yutaka Yamamoto’s wonderful directing job brought out an amazing set of characters that were well drawn and, for lack of a better word, had unique “character.” I have my personal favorites amongst the cast (Takako and Nagi of course), but they each played an essential part and none felt like merely a sidekick to be the butt of some jokes. I can only hope that the mangaka recovers and is able to continue this wonderful work.

Impz- One Outs

Some people define a top anime as one that is well received by a popular mass. Some might consider great storytelling or perhaps superb and fluid animation. However, to me, the best anime should simply engage the viewer so much that he or she just cannot wait to find out what will happen in the very next episode. FOR EVERY SINGLE EPISODE.

One outs is probably the anime that most people would not watch. It has many things going against it. First, it is not exactly well animated unlike the works of SHAFT or Kyoto Animation. Second, it is a sport series, and you can tell the allergy of anime fans about sports anime in general. There are no moe stuff in the show, and it does not even have girls in the first place! That eliminates a huge group of anime viewers who will watch this show. However, for those who are ready to throw away their preconceptions, they are well treated to perhaps the top show of 2008.

Deep, insightful and mind-twisting, One Outs is not a series that appears to be that way at the start. However, Toua Tokuchi steals the whole show as a very complex person that enjoys the adrenalin of gambling yet still pursuing victory in the league of baseball. There is this quiet anticipation when an episode is going to be released, and I think the reason is because you will always wonder Toua will do to wriggle out of a situation that is impossible to conquer. Just in the latest episode, he met his nemesis with a sprinter base stealer and an intelligent coach. As his pitch is a slow 83mph fastball, it meant that it was almost impossible for him to prevent the steal. However, through the means of strategy and deceit, he managed to beat that man twice after allowing him to score the first time round.

One outs is a series that is probably not the “greatest”, but it manages to be MY best anime of 2008 because it is the only series that has made me want to find out what will go on at the next episode. Every single episode has a good cliffhanger, and it has managed to capture my attention to name it here.

Crusader- Macross Frontier, True Tears, and VOTOMS: Pailsen Files

It was good year overall, and I hate picking favorites but I am capable of cheating on such trivial matters. Suffice to say it was a good year for mecha, on the shoujo side of things Ita-kiss started to drag a bit in the end and while I am still agonizing over the final thoughts post for it I can’t say it blew everything else out of the water. Tytania is still chugging along same with Gundam 00 so until its all over an done with final verdict will have to wait. Minami-ke was fun but had that annoying Fuyuki kid to piss all over it, though next year might be a 180 turn for the better.

I have declared my undying love for Macross Frontier on numerous occasions and look forward to Do You Remember Hime in summer of 2009. True Tears was a great ride and while poor Noe martyred herself, at least Noble Nobuse got his feelings across in the end. Pailsen Files was just simply short, simple, and sweet. While they might not be making the top lists fo many others out there I like each of these for doing some specific things well. Macross Frontier boasted a great sound track for those who were not allergic to J-pop and gave us some of the most beautiful dogfights I have ever had the privilege to see, and to top it off gave us all a wonderful finale with 2.25 Macross Class Ships duking it out for supremacy. Also Kikuko Inoue was simply marvelous as Grace, I hope she gets more evil roles in the future. Too bad it was dogged by QUALITY animation for most of the middle. True Tears also boasted a formidable sound track as well, and included one of the better instances of harem I have seen in some time for an anime drama I hope it will be long remembered for doing things competently. Good luck to PA Works on their next project, I shall follow their stint with great interest.

Finally an old trooper from 2007 was finally finished with the release of the last episode of Pailsen Files, while it started in 2007 it only ended a few months ago for me. While the least complicated of the series released and finished this year it was still a great OVA. While it’s praise was little sung on the interwebs, it boasted some great visuals along with a finale that would have made Heinlein proud. It’s more of a niche series for the real robot faction of mecha who can tolerate a bit of grimdark instead of the now more typical teenage pilot fare.

Shokkeru- Kure-nai, Kannagi

Coincidentally, I wasn’t expecting either show to be as good as they were based on initial impressions. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by both shows and out of the not-so-many shows I’ve watched this year, these have to be at the top of my list. Calawain has already gone over how great of a show Kannagi is so I won’t reiterate what he’s said.

For me, Kure-nai was a good mix of drama, comedy, and action. The plot was decent and the story moved along at a slow pace. But what really impressed me by the show was the “everyday” interactions between Shinkurou, Murasaki and the rest of the cast. The most “awesome” episode has to be the “musical” episode where everyone breaks into a song and dance towards the end. Not only was this totally unexpected, but it was so cheesy and over-the-top that I can’t help but laugh my ass off whenever I see it.

I really think shows like these are great because of the interesting characters and their interactions with each other. It’s really hard to appreciate this series if you’re not into that kind of stuff and want more action or in-depth plot. You could say that it’s boring, but something about it is genuinely satisfying and entertaining.

Lupus- Ookiku Furikabut- oh, best show released this year? Eve no Jikan

Ookiku Furikabutte is the best show I watched this year. I can hear the cries of “LOL SPORTS ANIMU DO NOT WANT” echoing down the intertubes, but Ookiku Furikabutte is a simply marvelous show that I can recommend to everyone, regardless of what you feel for baseball or sports in general. I don’t care about baseball either, it’s a slow, boring game beaten out in the slow and boring departments only by crap like cricket and lawn bowling. Now I’d like to see someone make an interesting cricket or lawn bowling animu. WATCH THAT BALL ROLL TOWARDS THAT OTHER BALL IN SUPER SLOW MOTION SURROUNDED BY AWESOME MOTION LINES!

Seriously, even if Mihashi is one of the most insufferable male leads in the history of mankind, the quick pacing, catchy music, solid animation and burning GUTS and PASSION make this the best show I watched all year. Even if you don’t take into account the fact that it’s A-1’s first solo anime, it’s still an all-round amazing piece of work. It’s a 2007 show though, so let’s talk 2008.

What about Eve no Jikan? It’s a completely different kind of show, one I’d probably place on the opposite end of the spectrum from Ookiku, if one can devise a spectrum for kinds of anime. An ONA (original net animation) by the director of Pale Cacoon, Eve explores, amongst other things, the concept of what makes us humans through the tried and tired setting of a society where humanoid androids have come into common usage. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, it’s probably a duck, right? Not so in the Time of Eve.

From the very first scene I was hooked. It’s a close up of a young man and young woman sitting next to each other, yet they’re not looking at each other. Instead, Rikuo is staring into his mobile phone, absorbed by its content. It is clear, through their lack of conversation, that these two characters are distant from each other. Not only does their physical proximity do nothing to close the gap, but it serves to emphasize it. Then the camera zooms out, and we find out exactly just how distant they are – Sammy is an android, and Rikuo is examining her movement data with his mobile phone. It’s a twist that foretells the one towards the end of this first episode, and it sets the tone of the show – in the Time of Eve, nothing is as it seems.

Not only does Eve offer us some great ideas to think over, but it’s very well executed. The shaky, handy-cam like quality of the camera work makes the show feel personal, like you’re right there watching the story unfold. The 3D sets is simply the best use of 3D CG I’ve seen in an anime since Moyashimon’s OP. The use of music and sound compliments the mood of each scene perfectly, with the deliberate exclusion of ambient noise in a scene in episode two being particularly memorable. Then there’s also the charismatic characters, the humour, the imagery and symbolism… the list of things done right in this show is so long it deserves its own post. In fact, the only down side that I can think of to this show is the months long wait in between episodes, but that’s nothing compared to the more than 3 FUCKING GODDAMN years I’ve waited for A Dance with Dragons. I can only hope George R. R. Martin doesn’t follow in the footsteps of Robert Jordan.

P.S. I haven’t been able to find any information on the book Code:Life, but reading other’s posts on this series, it seems like a fairly famous book. If anyone can give me a link to information about this book, I’ll be extremely grateful.

Jiff – Detroit Metal City

I thought 2008 was a pretty good year for anime, but I thought it was a great year for film and OVAs. Eve no Jikan, Candy Boy, and Kara no Kyōkai were all excellent, blending wonderful stories with beautiful animation – I especially loved the animation and art direction on Candy Boy. But the one that towered above the rest was, for me, Detroit Metal City.

I truly can’t remember the last time I watched anything that made me laugh as consistently as this show. Every week brought another gut-busting episode, and with every passing week I had to tell more and more of my friends about it. At first, I told only my friends that were also into anime, but by the end of the show’s run I had told pretty much everyone I knew, and everyone was loving it. Even after watching an episode – the first one, for instance – several times with several different people, I never stopped laughing, nor even laughed less.

That highlights the best thing about DMC: it is pure comedy, perfectly distilled by Japanese scientists and injected into our brains, and it can be enjoyed by practically anyone, anime fan or not.

I would be remiss not to mention Clannad, the show that has quickly become my favorite show of all time. Though the show came out last year, and the VN some 4 years ago, my enjoyment of the series led me to try the VN, and that led to a new interest in the visual novel in general. Amongst others, I have been reading Chaos;Head this winter, and I am glad that I am branching out into other sides of the otakusphere. I have big plans for 2009, perhaps venturing to my first con and buying my first figurine

lelangir – Eve no Jikan, Toradora, Kannagi, Kimikiss

Yes, I picked too many, for I cannot reduce “best” to a single one – too many paradigm shifts. But let me briefly append my [late] thoughts on these shows.

Eve: I find that Eve does a stellar job at perspective. Whenever androids are depicted as very human-like, they never show the synthetic halo. Eve subverts typified notions of humanity by presenting challenging notions of “the human” – and the cafe is the locus of this subversion. This is especially poignant in episode three, where the two androids don’t even realize they are artificial beings, yet their love is sincere, it is “true” or “real”, it is no different than human love. In that respect, we cannot even call it a “different kind” of love, reverting to scare-quoting that hides are hesitancy to objectify the android as if it is not capable of love. Eve kicks reason to the curb.

Toradora: What sets Toradora apart from other drama-oriented shows (like Clannad) is that there is little pandering and fan-service. Oh you could argue that Ami is fanservice, and she is, but in a much different meaning. In Clannad, moe is not related to the environment or social terrain. When the creators attempt to justify this disconnect, it is half-baked. Kotomi is depicted as a socially fragile creature, a product of her parent’s predicament in the first season. But this is only for her arc. After she’s completely fine, but, alas, this is the dilemma of trying to adapt visual novels, and a similar problem is evident in Kanon 2006 – it’s just too fast. It’s not so much the resolution as it is the transition from resolution to tension, the establishment of dissonance. Toradora, however, gives a very substantiating reason and precondition for archetypes like the tsundere. In fact, the dichotomy between Taiga and Ami is peculiar because they’re both spoiled well-to-do girls. Taiga’s tsundereness is a product of her environment and history; it isn’t just blindly thrown out there to pander to the audience as an ahistoric character trait with no basis (like Kyou). Typical personalities are not avoided in Toradora, but they are substantiated and characteristically validated. It is also noteworthy to mention the theme of family, Toradora vis-a-vis Clannad. I’m especially fond of the juxtaposition of the dramatic use of the father…

Kannagi: “You’re looking too deep into this” claims notwithstanding, Kannagi is the most effective social commentary I’ve seen in a while. It even deploys a bit of meta-satire, obviously “lolikko cutie” being a play off Nagi’s idolatry. What I really loved was how Zange was “demonized” via commodification. Zange means literally “confession”, and there was quite a pun on this, as j1mone tells us, 100 yen per “confession” is also taken as 100 yen per Zange-chan. The character Zange is equated to money, she sells herself! And in the last episode, we see Zange publicizing her latest album, encouraging people to buy it. I forget what the album was about though. In the end, I think Kannagi tells us, also, to kick reason to the curb. While Nagi is the nameless goddess of a portable shrine, she finds conviction in her lack of identity. Jin finds meaning not in her hazy history but in the fun times they had together. However, Nagi’s duty as protector of Kannagi is achieved incidentally here because Jin becomes happy: really, it’s a win-win situation in that by ignoring the purpose of the goddess, its purpose is inevitably achieved.

Kimikiss: Well, I can’t complain much when I actually see some straight-ahead jazz references. Despite Now’s The Time being as cliche as you can possibly be in regards to standard jazz repertoire, it was nice to see Kai depicted as a learner, precisely what a jazz musician is always.

Besides this, Kimikiss was a straight up, straight-up romance. Pulled little punches, was very mediocre, but that’s what made it great.