Top 10 Anime Shows - #10-6

Read the introduction first?

Let’s jump right into #10.

The only also-ran I have for the #10 spot is Fullmetal Alchemist and Brotherhood. I don’t call these two one series, nor should anyone because of how wildly different they are. Both of these series definitely have a great amount of wide appeal, evident in just how popular they both are in Japan and in the US. But it just doesn’t eclipse what my actual #10 is, and that is One Piece.

I really, really hesitated to put One Piece on here because it is, I think, objectively worse than Fullmetal Alchemist, and it’s a lot less accessible to a large fanbase because of its length and its sillier moments.

But One Piece is well into its 600s of chapters and almost in the 600s of episodes, and it’s still going strong for me. Some of the most recent arcs, just before the time skip, were some of the most emotionally charged stories in anything, in my opinion. That, by and large, is why I think One Piece is so great. Its ability to tell stories at this high of a level for this long is extremely impressive to me.

One Piece does have a really simple way of telling a story, which is basically powerful person is trying to take over place and Straw Hat Pirates defeat them in the end. Interlaced in this storytelling is flashbacks that inform on a major character of the arc (whether that be Luffy, Zoro, Nami, or whoever). But each of the stories that they’re telling are just so good and hit you in ways that you don’t expect. I did not expect to be shedding tears over the destruction of a ship, but I certainly was watching One Piece.

I think what One Piece does the best is that it doesn’t kill characters just to give finality to the story. It’s something that anime does frequently in these long-running shonen shows, and even Fullmetal Alchemist is guilty of this (but it doesn’t detract from the story). The first major death in the present time doesn’t occur until well into the 500s of chapters, I believe. That, I think, is a testament to just how good Eiichiro Oda’s storytelling is.

It’s a really daunting task to just step into almost 600 episodes of just one show, but I’ll tell you right now that it’s definitely worth it. If you skip over filler and OP/ED, you can power through the show pretty easily in two weeks (that is if you have nothing else, or very little else, to do).

No time to dwell on One Piece, though, which is definitely the longest thing I have on this list. Moving on to #9.

I have a crap ton of also-rans for the #9 spot, and it’s really because they’re similar to my #9. They’re all love stories in a regular-ish setting. First of the also-rans is Fruits Basket. Fruits Basket didn’t quite make the list because some of the anime stories are really meandering in the scope of a 26-episode series. The manga would almost certainly make a top 10 list for me, but the anime just falls short because it’s missing that true ending instead of the anime ending. Also-ran number two is Ouran High School Host Club, for the same reasons that Fruits Basket didn’t make it. Ouran is a brilliant not-really-deconstruction-but-more-parody of the over-the-top shojo tropes, and it’s just so funny. But it leaves every love story open for reading the manga by the end of the series, which had its own (very similar to the manga’s) ending.

The rest of the also-rans are: Clannad and After Story, but the first half drags on for maybe too long. However, it’s necessary for to inform the second half, I think. And the second half is really where the show is at its strongest. It just doesn’t have that complete greatness that the rest of the shows on this list do. Next is Nana, which suffers from the same things that Fruits Basket and Ouran do, and now it looks like we fans may never get an ending to even the manga. Which is really too bad because Nana is among the best shojo out there, ever. Next is Honey and Clover, which I really have to and want to revisit because I think it’s a show that really grows on you more the more you revisit it. It’s completely dependent on you liking the characters to like the show, which isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t get into who they are and why you should like them fast enough and the first half of the first season suffers for it, unfortunately. Next is Kimi ni Todoke, which is a show that I really liked. But it’s a really subtle show, and thus doesn’t leave a huge impression on you. I was left with, “That was really, really good. I’ll revisit that down the line, but not anytime soon.” Which is why it has to be left off the list. Last, but not least, of the also-rans is Toradora. Toradora is a show that I immensely enjoyed, but it just doesn’t have that final push to make me love it completely. The ending also feels rushed and wrapped up nicely, when they could have done something like Oreimo and done a few extra ONAs and served themselves a much nicer ending. But they’re might have been something in production that prevented that.

Anyway! My ramblings aside, my #9 is, without any regrets, K-ON! and all related material. First season, second season, and movie. Loved it all. I can watch these girls just hang out for 40+ episodes and a movie and still want more. If any show has completely captured the art of meandering and telling that in standalone stories, it’s K-ON! This is a show that I will revisit probably at least every year, just for that nostalgic feeling you get watching these girls.

But really…this show completely captures that high school life of hanging out with your friends and that feeling of loss you have after you move on. It ends on a high note though, of course, because all the girls are going to the same college (and there’s a continuation manga!). If you didn’t have that really close relationship to people back in high school, or even in college, this might not resonate as strongly with you. Or if you can’t stand just meandering stories, and K-ON! is very meandering, then it might not be your cup of tea. But K-ON!’s kind of meandering is a good kind of meandering; a kind of meandering that informs the characters in ways that some of the also-rans couldn’t do as well.

The dub cast for K-ON! is suitable, but kind of hit-and-miss overall. The actress for Yui strains at several parts and it’s not until you watch a few episodes that you even start to get over it. Mio seems to be perfectly voice matched, but I have to wonder what she’s bringing to the table that the Japanese seiyuu wasn’t. Meanwhile, Mugi is portrayed middle-of-the-road in terms of the performance, but the overall tonality of Mugi was definitely maintained, and I have to give the actress a few more points for that. Azusa was lacking compared to the Japanese seiyuu, but I feel that the dub performance brought something different, albeit subtle, to the table compared to the original. Ritsu, however, is by far the best performance in this dub as a whole. I didn’t really like Ritsu overall based on the Japanese, but the dub really tips it for me. I found myself falling more and more for Ritsu because of how good it was.

So overall, the show really does a lot of things well. But it’s also a very divisive show, with the detractors saying that it’s just moe pandering (which is kind of is). I’m not sure it’s worth putting at #9, but it’s definitely better than One Piece and, on a personal level, I wanted both One Piece and K-ON! to be included because of how much I like these two series. Unfortunately, that means a few other shows get the shaft. Sorry, those shows.

Moving on to #8.

I don’t have any also-rans for the #8 spot, so I’ll just jump right it. The #8 is Hellsing Ultimate, which is not to include the sometimes great, usually spotty TV series.

Hellsing Ultimate, to me, is, well, the ultimate form of anime entertainment. It’s not for the light at heart because, just like the Trust and Betrayal OVAs, there’s a crap ton of blood that pours from places you didn’t think had that much blood to pour from. But the draw to this series will always be Alucard ripping the ever living shit out of people. Sure, there’s some interesting takes and/or deconstructions of vampire tropes as well as a slave-master duality between Seras-Alucard and Alucard-Integra. But what this boils down to is I want to watch Alucard rip things apart in a gruesome manner.

If I watch any show just for the pure, high-octane entertainment value, it is Hellsing. I marathoned through Hellsing I-VIII, the only ones that are in English, and I have absolutely no regrets about that decision. That was eight hours of pure entertainment.

I think what really makes me love this series so much is the rivalry between Alucard and Anderson. Alucard constantly says that no one is immortal, and that seems to be a running theme through the series. But Anderson, the once mortal who Alucard wanted to be killed by, becomes a monster himself and Alucard loses all respect for the man Anderson once was. That says a lot about the character of Alucard and Kouta Hirano does that absolutely brilliantly.

So, yeah. For me, there’s not much more to be said about Hellsing Ultimate. The draw is, and always will be, entertainment. Pure and simple.

Ok, #7.

I had a lot of trouble putting the #7 on the list, just because, aside from One Piece, it’s the only show that’s still airing. And, for all I know, it could have a really bad ending. But it’s just a testament to how good this show has been up to this point that it got on the list.

Before that, though, a few also-rans for #7. These are also relatively new series. The first one is Chihayafuru, which took the fall 2011 season by storm. It was by and far the best show out of that season and I am super excited for the second season coming out in the winter 2012 season. But Chihayafuru kind of had it all for me. It had great characters, with Chihaya, Taichi, Nishida, Komano, and Oe, and a great driving plot for all of them, in the karuta card game. Beyond that, it’s a fairly conventional sports anime, which says a lot about its characters. The relation between these five, and the additional past history with Arata, Chiahya, and Taichi, makes this show absolutely amazing. I’d love to put it on the list, but pandering to my own desires and putting K-ON! and One Piece beat this show out.

The other also-ran is Madoka Magica. It is an absolutely brilliant piece of work from Gen Urobuchi (the writer for Fate/Zero’s original light novels and second season as well as the fall 2012 season’s sci-fi Psycho-Pass) that should be a required viewing for anyone who calls themselves a fan of the magical girl genre. Shows like Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura paved the way for this to be created and it almost certainly wouldn’t be the same without their own deconstructions of the genre. But Madoka Magica takes deconstructing a genre to the level that hasn’t been done in 16 years when Neon Genesis Evangelion premiered in Japan. It starts off as a pretty typical magical girl fare…and then episode three hits you like a ton of bricks. And it just gets darker and darker and darker from there. These are middle school girls dealing with all of this and it is played absolutely brilliantly. I can say with certainty that the magical girl genre won’t have another great show like this in a good five years at least.

But my #7 show is Space Brothers. It’s just such a great show and by far the best season from a spectacular spring 2012 season that also included Kids on the Slope, Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, and tsuritama.

Space Brothers is a show that takes its time with telling its own story. Once we were 30 episodes in, our protagonist, Mutta, still hadn’t become an astronaut—which is what he’s been trying to accomplish since probably episode two or three.

What makes this show great, or what took it over the edge from just really, really good for me, was around episode 25 when Mutta and four other characters were placed inside an isolated pod tube apartment-ish place as part of JAXA’s astronaut exam. The characters themselves were there for two weeks and it felt like I was watching them in real time. Yet I was constantly at the edge of my seat wanting to know what happened next. Then there’s always one or two episodes of just build up to the point where we find out Mutta has moved further on in the astronaut exam. Each and every time, I don’t know whether he’s going to succeed…But dammit, I’m cheering him on, on the edge of my seat, to succeed.

This just explores characters, both Mutta and the myriad of side characters, in such an amazing and deep way that I don’t frequently see in anime, or even American TV. I don’t think I’d see five minutes of a 20 minute episode dedicated to a character we’ve seen on screen for maybe 20 minutes prior to this. But Space Brothers does just that. It takes the time to give some of the seemingly less important background characters their time in the spotlight. And it could very easily feel like wrapping up the storyline with a nice bow (the character I’m referring to previously had several quarrels with Kenji, who quickly became friends with Mutta at the beginning of the exam), but it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like you learned about the character instead of, “Ok, their story is over now. Moving on.” And I really appreciate that out of this show.

Once this gets a dub, and by god it had better, this is definitely going right alongside suggestions like Cowboy Bebop and all the Ghibli movies as great ways of introducing someone to anime. That’s just how good it is. It doesn’t feel like I’m watching an anime, but it being in animation really brings it to life.

Moving right along to #6.

The also-rans here are simply the works of Makoto Shinkai, simply for lack of a better place to put them. I haven’t seen Children Who Chase Lost Voices, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. I also have very little recollection of Place Promised in Our Early Days, but I remember liking that a lot. However, his two works that really represent what he can do as an animator, director, and writer are his debut Voices of a Distant Star and the feature length 5 Centimeters per Second. Voices really hits me every time I watch it. I remember getting it in the mail, watching the dub, watching the sub, watching the sub that Shinkai acted in himself, then watching the dub again. It really is that good. 5 Centimeters per Second is something that I’ve really been meaning to revisit, but I’ve seen it twice and really liked it both times. I’ve only seen the ADV dub of the film, but I thought it was outstanding. David Matranga always seems out of place at first (given my introduction to him was Sanzo in Saiyuki, it’s understandable), but he outshines as always. While Voices emphasizes trying to be together, even though you’re so far away, 5 cm emphasizes the tragedy of simply drifting away from those you love. Both stories are just told fantastically and if you want to check out Shinkai as a whole, do Voices. If you dislike it, stop. If you like it, watch the rest of his stuff. At the very least, you’ll really appreciate the animation in it, because it is top notch.

My #6 best anime I’ve ever seen is Spice and Wolf. The stories that Isuna Hasekura are trying to tell are absolutely stunning in their detail and the dynamic between Lawrence and Holo is among the best dynamics between two characters in anything.

I think what really drew me to the series is that both Lawrence and Holo are exactly the type of character that I love to watch do things. They’re both extremely intelligent, yet sometimes just as naïve, and they both always seem to have a plan—even if that plan isn’t panning out exactly as they planned.

The series as a whole tells four complete stories, or four of Hasekura’s now 17 light novels, and each and every story is unique and creative. From the silver coin fiasco to smuggling gold to selling pyrite to fur trading again, they are all amazing works of creative brilliance in economics. I remember the pyrite, which involves simply watching the time go by with Lawrence, and it is one of the most tense moments that I ever remember watching. And it’s just so mundane, it’s great.

What this really boils down to is whether you like Lawrence and Holo and like their dynamic. Because that will be make or break in the series. If you love them, you love the series. If you hate them, you probably hate the series.

Alright, that was a lot of also-rans. I got most of them out of the way, but the rest deserve the wait. Now, that was #10-6. Next up, #5-1. Which you can read here.

Top 10 Anime Shows - Introduction

I recently listened though ANNcast’s top 10 anime of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. That got me thinking that my own top anime list was extremely outdated, because I wrote that about a year and a half or two years ago. And a lot can be watched in that time period. And, trust me, I have watched a lot in that time period. I have several also-rans for each number, either because they were similar to that particular show or because they deserve to be mentioned in tandem with that particular number.

First, I want to explain a bit on how I ranked each of these. First and foremost, on a personal level, is rewatchability. For example, things like Buffy and Breaking Bad are really good. They’re really, really good. But do I really have a desire to watch them again? Buffy, yeah, way down the line. Breaking Bad? Probably not ever again. So the top shows on this list I’ll want to watch over and over again and I’ll never get sick of them; or they’re shows that I finished and I immediately wanted to start back over again, just to have that same feeling again.

Next in how I ranked these shows was, of course, simply how much I enjoyed them on a personal level. This works in tandem with how objectively good I think these shows are at their peak. And that last part is extremely important, because some of these shows can really drag at parts (*cough* One Piece *cough*).

Before I start listing off all these series, I want to mention a few shows that just didn’t make the cut. They were ruled out before I even considered the rest of the list.

First off is Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal. I watched this back in high school, when I was going through that huge nostalgia phase where I watched everything I did back when Toonami was on weekday afternoons (which included Rurouni Kenshin). At the time, I didn’t really like it that much. Now, when I watched it again, I was really impressed. This show really captured a lot of what I liked about the franchise as a whole, yet put it in a much more serious manner. It’s also tragic to see Kenshin grow up like he did. The title gives away what’s going to happen (spoilers: it’s betrayal). But it’s executed in a way that you don’t 100 percent expect. But it just missed the cut because it didn’t quite resonate with me. I loved Kenshin when I was a kid because it had that ridiculous shonen-y feel to it. This was definitely much more adult storytelling, but it wasn’t the Kenshin I knew. Perhaps if I watch the Kyoto arc of the TV show, I’ll like it more. But pure personal preference threw this off the list. Though that doesn’t mean it wasn’t really great, it was. If this were a top 15 list, perhaps it would make it. Alas, I have no reservations about leaving it off.

Next is Mushishi. Mushishi is a show that really took me a while to finish, or even want to finish. Travis Willingham’s acting really put it over for me, because it was a bore for me the first time around. That said, this show has some really great singular stories that cannot be ignored. “The Light of the Eyelid,” “Raindrops and Rainbows,” and “The Sound of Rust” are among a few of my favorites. But the fact remains that I didn’t want to finish this series at all when I first watched it. It’s only watching it a second time, remembering with nostalgia the great stories that lay within this series, that I began to truly appreciate it. It was around episode 17 or so that I said to myself, “Ok, just power through the rest. Doesn’t matter how bored you are.” Now, I still can probably only take these episodes in in moderation, and that’s what puts it over the edge and out of top 10 territory. Again, if this were a top 15 list, this would almost certainly make it. But alas.

Last, but not least, is Gurren Lagann. I immensely enjoyed this show, and still do to this day. Kamina crying out in episode eight still gives me chills whenever I think about it (but that’s about all I can say without spoiling anything further for the few who haven’t seen this series). Out of these three also-rans, I’d call Gurren Lagann my favorite by a fairly wide margin. I’ve only heard snippets of the sub, but the dub is definitely top notch, up there with Cowboy Bebop and Baccano! as best dubs out there. This one isn’t missing anything in particular…but it’s lacking in one compartment compared to every other show on the list. I can’t justify placing it higher than anything that’s already on my list and, thus, its regrettably relegated to the also-rans.

Ok, that is the introduction. Next up, my #10-6 and the also-rans for those. Read it here.

Releasing a DVD

I haven’t written words here in a while, and it’s mostly because I couldn’t really think of anything worthwhile to write about. But now I’ve finally thought of something. What is the process of releasing a DVD/BD state side?

First, your typical turnaround from the airing of the final episode to DVD/BD release date in the US is about a year and a half, give or take six months or so (sometimes more, rarely less). Funimation’s products, as far as I can tell, usually have a year and a half turnaround. There are some outliers (Like A Certain Magical Index/A Certain Scientific Railgun) and things like Hellsing and the other Geneon/ADV stuff that Funimation hauled in after Geneon/ADV’s respective demises won’t use this same turnaround.

There are several reasons as to why this takes so long. The first and foremost reason is materials. The Japanese licensor just can’t get the music, the video, the scripts, or the whatever elses to the US licensee fast enough. This, I suspect, is what delayed Hellsing and A Certain Magical Index for so long. However, the license itself can take forever to complete as well, and that can stall a release faster than anything. The most recent, or perhaps most notable, example I can think of is Evangelion 2.0. The problem with that was that Gainax (the production company behind Evangelion) thinks the product is worth its weight in gold. And if you combine all the merchandise that Eva has released over the years, that’s a lot of gold. Anyway, Gainax wanted way too much for the license and Funimation had to either talk them down or concede to a higher price than they wanted to (probably a combination thereof).

Of course, there can be several other reasons as to why production is stalled. The video could be flawed in some way or the English dub audio could be flawed in some way or they could have to recast someone based on the Japanese input or whatever. It really depends on the title itself and the bumps in the road that particular title runs into.

[Note: The Japanese have the final say in everything, including scripts, casts, DVD/BD menus…As far as I know, every part of the US release has to be approved by someone on the Japanese side of things. I’m sure that sometimes, they’ll just sign off on stuff willy-nilly. But for something like Evangelion, I would bet some Gainax intern has to look through everything that a higher up executive or production member doesn’t want to.]

Moving right along, the licenses themselves are split into several parts. So when you license a series from Japan, you have to get the license for the music, for the DVD release, for the BD release, for the streaming release, and so many others that I don’t even know. Sometimes, however, you get a license that just says “home video release license” (or the actual technical title). But what that means is that the licensee gets to release that show on DVD, on BD, and on any future home video thing that we invent for the duration of the license. That’s why you’d see so many, “Sentai formally announces license for X show” or “Funimation announces home video release for Y show.” Because, nowadays, these companies will just license the streaming first to see how it does and then license the actual show for home video. Sentai’s just been announcing that it will stream X show, but never formally says it has a license for anything (but you can bet that it does have a license for X show if Sentai is streaming it).

Finally, there’s the dub production. That’s a whole separate article that I’ll just save for later because that goes through producers, line producers, directors, script writers, actors, and a whole plethora of other important people (those are the folks during the ending that you skip over). But the US licensee goes through dub production, gets it signed off by the Japanese, and finally releases that title in the US. A formal announcement of release date, I would imagine, comes pretty near the end of production. But dub actors usually records shows about four to six months prior to release. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but I believe it hovers around that.

When it finally gets released, the typical thing to do now is 13-episode sets. Very rarely do you see sets with fewer episodes than that (unless the complete series is fewer episodes than 13). The most recent ones that I can think of are Madoka Magica and K-ON!’s first season, both of which were release in four-episode sets. Funimation has, on at least three occasions, released the complete series at one time in two 13-episode sets. But very rarely do you see sets that are released with more than 13-episode in a first run, unless it’s a reprint or an old title (shows that Discotek and Nozomi have been licensing are among these exceptions).

This release schedule is much easier on the wallet than how it used to be. Now, you can get 13 episodes for about $45, usually less, sometimes more. Before, you would spend $20-30 on four episodes. Oh how the times have changed.

Well, that’s a quick and dirty version of the process, with I’m sure a good bunch of holes missing in what I’m saying. But this is the gist of it all, I believe.