Subdued Fangirling's Top 12 Anime of 2012

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Tis the season for anime opinions! If you follow the aniblogosphere at all, you know that mid-December all the way through New Years is when everybody and their dog posts their top-everything lists for the past year. Subdued Fangirling is not immune to this! To kick off the festivities, I'll be participating in Kidd's Ani-Blogger's Choice Awards with my personal Top 12 favorites!


12. Kamisama Hajimemashita (Kamisama Kiss)
Just when this last season was making me think that it was time to turn in my shoujo fangirl card, this show came around and surprised me. There's not anything particularly new going on here, especially if you've been around the shoujo block a few times, but it's charming execution and characters make up for a lot of it. The tropes do not limit this show in any way; in fact, it might be better because of them. I have liked every single episode so far, and there aren't a lot of anime series that I can say that about. This is supernatural romance at its best. If you were even remotely interested in watching it and aren't already, I highly encourage giving it a try. Even if you're not too interested in the romance aspect, Tomoe is one awesome character. A solidly entertaining show all around.


11. Natsuyuki Rendezvous
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in the blogosphere that likes this show. And I agree with a lot of the criticism; the big stretch of time in the middle with Hazuki in fairy-tale purgatory was ultimately unnecessary and dragged down the show's pace a lot. However, I still think that this is beautiful show about the complexity of relationships. A widow's dead husband is haunting her while a new man tries to enter her life! That is an amazing premise, and it's carried out very well, although I do think that this is a rare series that may have done better with less than 12 episodes. However, we do spend enough time with the characters to realize that there's no "right" answer here, and by the end it's really become the ghost's story of letting go rather than about the widow moving on. I found it to be touching and heartbreaking and very insightful about what it's really like to be in love, and I wish that more people would give it a chance. If you're tired of the fumbling of teenage romance anime, this is your show.


10. Ano Natsu de Matteru
...And right after I insult teenage romance, I rank this show higher anyway. Uh. I can explain.

Despite the permise involving aliens, Ano Natsu was clearly focused on just being a good romance show, and it really was. No frustrating plots driven entirely by misunderstandings here; characters actually talk to each other to work out their feelings! What a concept! It's a bit sad that this idea is so refreshing in anime, but it really is. There's still plenty of drama (they are teenagers) but even with the alien angle, it was all very believable, and the characters were likable. Even though it was obvious how the main love triangle would resolve itself early on, I still felt bad for who got left out and never felt compelled to "take sides" even though I had my preferences. If anime insists on sticking with teenagers, then this is how romance anime should be done. Also, it has the Men In Black. I can't think of another high school romance show that can say that.


9. Space Bros (Uchuu Kyoudai)
The main reason why this show is low on the list is because it has an interesting problem with pacing. It loves to take its time (the arc about the third astronaut exam was, what, eleven episodes?) yet each episode feels like only five minutes! I've put this show on hold a lot because I can't stand the suspense from week to week. I think I get a lot more out of it by watching it in bulk. Anyway, this show originally hooked me with the relationship of the brothers this show is titled after, but the show's charm extends far past that. The ongoing fascination with space that we all share, characters that you didn't even expect to like becoming extremely compelling, a plot centered around the desire to reach for your dreams, no matter how far-fetched they may seem... This is good stuff. If you haven't already seen it, then I don't know what to say to you other than to fix that as soon as possible.


8. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
In a word: Fabulous. Despite having the plot of the first arc spoiled for a me a while ago and having never read the manga, Jojo has completely worked its magic on me. I don't think that there's any other show out there that can have me laughing at how ridiculous the plot, the characters, and their attacks can get while simultaneously being completely invested in how it will play out. It's easy to see how this series has influenced many after it, although I wish that shounen series would've also adopted its excellent sense of pacing. No training or battle sequences drag on too long, and the show never loses it's weird sense of spot-on unintentional humor, if that makes sense. For example, PLUCK!

Anyway, I would've ranked this higher except for two reasons. One, it hasn't been airing that long. As of the writing of this post, the first arc just finished. It was glorious, but I'm told that later arcs are much better. Second, the animation is not very good. This is the worst quality I've seen from David Production and I was disappointed. At the moment it seems like they've thrown all the money into the OP, but I hope that they've saved some for later arcs. Overall though, it's obvious why Jojo is the standard-bearer for it's genre, and it deserves a spot on this list.


7. Smile Precure
A while back, I tried to marathon Futari wa Precure, the first Precure series, and I couldn't get through it because it was so repetitive. And I'm the person who likes the ridiculous episodic villans in Sailor Moon! However, Smile Precure has changed my mind about the franchise and I'm glad I gave it a chance. It still has all the normal trappings that you'd expect from this kind of show (it airs in the morning and is aimed at young girls), but the way it handles its characters and plot is fantastic. Even the filler episodes are a joy to watch. And when this show decides to pull out all the stops, it really goes for it. The first time the above image appeared? I got chills, it was incredibly badass. If you are a magical girl fan or like magical girls at all, this is a great series.


6. Daily Lives of High School Boys
This show has ruined me for high school-based comedy forever. I don't think that any other show could be as consistently hilarious and relatable as this one is. I was never a high school boy, but this still had me in stitches. The characters are the kind of people that all of us knew at one point. The jokes are something that you have to see for yourself, since it would be a shame to spoil them. There are also a few jabs at otaku culture and anime cliches that any fan should enjoy. This show has set the bar for comedy for me, and should not be missed.


5. Tsuritama
I don't know what I expected when I started watching this show; all I knew was that it was a noitaminA show with cute boys. What I got was a crazy alien fishing adventure centered around the power of friendship. Despite how absolutely insane it got at certain points with events pushing the logic of the story off the deep end, I loved it from beginning to end. This success has to do with the great portrayal of the main characters, whose issues and struggles were so important to me that everything else felt like a secondary plot. Forget the fate of the world, is everyone going to make it back okay? That's the result of excellent character arc scripting. However, I feel like a lot of people ignored it because they thought that it was fujoshi bait. I won't deny that there is some subtext, but classifying any show with a group of male characters that way means that you'll miss out on some good series like this one. noitaminA fans should definitely take a second look at this.


4. Natsume Yuujinchou Shi
It's Natsume. ...I have to explain further why it's on this list? Okay, fine.

I love how this show can seamlessly combine its supernatural elements with heartwarming (and heartbreaking) character moments. In it's fourth season, we've already spent enough time in this world for it to be completely realistic to the viewer, and now we're moving away from stories about the spirits that Natsume encounters (although they still play a huge role) and are getting into our main character's past instead, seeing how far he's really come. It's hard for me to put my feelings for this series into words. After over fifty episodes, the series is getting into some serious emotional payoff. I can't wait to see where the next season (you know there's going to be another season, they just haven't announced it yet) will go.


3. Humanity Has Declined (Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita)
Coming completely out of left field, the seemingly harmless series about fairies at the end of the world turned out to be a cynical, dark-humor driven commentary on society at large and the mistakes that we are making that could push our species out of relevance. Not every episode was a winner--for me, the space probe episodes were more confusing than anything else--but no other show this year was as thought provoking and simultaneously strange as this one. The fairies themselves were also hilarious (when they weren't creepy). This was easily one of my favorites for the year. Seen any time paradogs lately?


2. Hunter x Hunter
I'm not completely sure if this title is allowed under Kidd's rules since it's technically a long-running shounen series, but since the majority of it's air time was during this year, I say it counts! Haters to the left, Hunter x Hunter is the best shounen this year. I've said before that this is my first experience with this series, but it bears repeating since every move this show makes has surprised and facinated me. Despite the amazing abilities that the characters on this show have, conflicts are resolved mostly by who has the most unique strategy or whoever makes the first misstep. I've heard the most recent arc compared to chess, and it's a good analogy. This is the kind of show that stays riveting without constantly having its characters pull out the big guns. I can't wait to see what its run next year will have in store.


1. Chihayafuru
And finally, my number one pick as well as my Anime of Year goes to Chihayafuru! This should be no surprise to those of you who've been following me for a while. Shows like Chihayafuru are frankly why I watch anime. How else would I be able to watch a show about a sport involving memorization of Japanese poems and playing an extreme version of Memory with them? But it's not the strangeness of the premise, which is undeniably and exclusively Japanese, that makes this show so fascinating. It's the fact that it reaches beyond that, in character and in theme. Even a Westerner like me who had never heard of karuta before this show can still get extremely invested and fist-pump when Chihaya gets the card that she needed. I am not a sports anime fan. I am not usually interested in shows that heavily reference something cultural that I'm not familiar with. I am a fan of josei, but this is not a show that is really interested in romance; it comes in as an afterthought. However, this show is a compelling piece of entertainment all the same, and I am beyond excited for the second season. If you only watch a handful of shows every year, this one should be one of them, otherwise you're really missing out. I cannot recommend it enough.

So overall, I think that that this was a pretty decent year for anime. What are your top shows from this year, and how do you rank them?

Images from Crunchyroll, YouTube, Pixiv, and Google Image Search.