Top 5 Anime so far

It occurred to me that if you have been reading this you might be wondering what I'm basing all of my reviews and idea on upon so far, so I thought I'd fill you in on my top 5 for enjoyment. According to My Anime List so far I have watched just 20 different series, plus 1 OVA and 3 specials.

#5: A Certain Scientific Railgun S (Season 2)

As you will have seen from my recent review, I really enjoyed the second season of A Certain Scientific Railgun. I thought the character development was really good and that it used the previous season to really add to the overall quality of the production. The focus on the main character was also really good and made me more invested in the series as a whole. On a less deep level, the action scenes were frequent and fantastically well done summing up the stellar artwork and animation throughout.

Mikoto Misaka attacking the vending machine: well there's an idea?

#4: Clannad: After Story

In truth, this series should probably be higher on this list. I really appreciate that the overall production and emotional response this anime inspires is incredible. More specifically, this was worth watching for the amount of times I thought I'd got over the worst of the emotional shock, the show hit me again with something even worse until the very biggest emotional earthquake at the end of the show. It was great to see the characters, who are fantastic, go beyond high school and get real lives and have real problems happen to them. Without making this too much of a review, I will say that I'm not entirely sure how well I thought the supernatural element of the show worked but that really is a debatable point.

So much sadness.

#3: Angel Beats

Angel Beats was the anime that really got me started on watching lots of series quickly. Watching the English dub, I really enjoyed the voice acting and music. There were some really funny moments which fitted in well with the fundamentally serious and difficult storyline that was the bedrock of the anime. Yuri is also possibly (in competition with #2's lead), my favourite female character in any anime - it was just a disappointment that there wasn't a bit more time to develop her clearly very interesting character. Angel Beats comes above Clannad in my list because of the meaning it has for me in getting me really interested in anime. Why does it not come higher then given the sentimentality I have towards it? Two reasons really: firstly it was too short, I felt that there were several back stories that could have been developed much more in 24 episodes and secondly; the love story that most people seem to think worked very well should have had more time through the anime to develop - being one of the key parts of the show, it should have definitely had more building time.

Kanade and Yuri. They're great, like really great... right?

#2. Mirai Nikki (Future Diary)

Before I say anything about Future Diary, I think I should point out that I know it has a lot of problems. It's not that original, there are some pretty big plot holes towards the end and actually the whole of premise of selecting the next god of space and time by seeing who can kill 11 other people is frankly crazy. That said this list isn't about overall objective quality, I'm going for what I enjoyed the most and Mirai Nikki is right up there. There are of course many reasons why which I will explain more when I do a review of this show, but essentially it can be summed up in one word. Yuno. After watching a 10 hours or so of anime, she is without doubt the craziest and possibly scariest lead I've yet to see, but I can't help but love her. Maybe call me mad, but I often felt myself feel really sorry for her; despite her psychopathic tendencies she did love Yuki, and I couldn't fault her for that. With that in mind, the degree level history student knows he could write a whole essay on Yuno's character, but that can probably wait for another day.

Yuno. She's as crazy as they come, but I love her all the same.

#1. Guilty Crown

Please keep reading my blog after this. I understand that a lot of people don't like Guilty Crown. They don't like Shu as a main character or they thought the ending was awful. Personally, I couldn't see the problem with the ending at all (really, I'm not going to try and pretend that I can) and if I was going to have a problem with a character it would be with Guy, not Shu, who's development was, at time, questionable. The first and most obvious reason to love Guilty Crown is the way it looks: the artwork is incredible and the action scenes are animated to a spectacularly high level. Another reason I loved the anime so much was Shu - as I mentioned above he received a lot of criticism for various reasons but I felt that his progression from powerless, shy school child to authoritarian ruler was very well done and made a lot of sense given the background of the show. Finally, I really enjoyed the overall premise of the show, the love story was strong without being overpowering and the post apocalyptic setting worked well for terrorist/reluctant leader aspects of the show. You don't have to love it, but I really did.

The conflict within Shu might just be the best part of Guilty Crown.

Thanks for reading this one and though I'm sure you don't agree at least you can see where some of my opinions are coming from in my reviews. I've just finished watching the first season of Infinity Stratos, so look out for the review of that one in the next few days!