Anime 2024 Year in Review
Another year has come and gone, and with it another year of anime. If there's a pervasive theme to 2024, I think it's the constant sense of there never being enough time. This can apply to a lot of things. Personally, I'm writing this as of 48 hours before my deadline. I don't know where the time went but I found myself busier than ever despite there not being a ton to show for it on paper. It's maybe the most frustrating thing about being an artist. Effort and time do not always translate to tangible results. All I can say is I hope some of the work I've done this year will pay dividends next year. In anime, I felt the squeeze of modern anime production more realistically than ever. This has been a noticeable trend for years, but this year it became impossible to ignore that a lot of anime were materially compromised, either in episode count or fidelity. The age of the 52 episode TV anime is dead, and I think the end of the 26 episode TV anime is not far off. We now live in the era of 13 episode seasons; a frankly inadequate number of episodes for many kinds of stories. Watching familiar stories try to fit themselves into this new format has been awkward to say the least.
It doesn't mean there weren't a lot of really fun stories to be had this year, but a persistent sense that many of this year's best anime could have been even better with some room to breath. I usually do a summary of every single TV anime I watch in a given year, but just like the anime I'm about to write about, my own time constraints mean a necessary curtailing. The shows I'll be talking about are the ones I think are most significant, either good or ill, to my 2024 anime watching experience. Let's get started.
Winter 2024's excellent showing is heavily assisted by the continuation of some 2023 standouts like Dungeon Meshi and Apothecary Diaries. However, Winter 2024 also reminds us of a grim Glorio adage; do not trust original anime, no matter how good the premise. Ninja Kamui and Metallic Rouge both started very strong before petering off in the most disappointing way possible. Both anime are emblematic of the trend I previously noted. I don't know if 26 episodes would have necessarily fixed things, but both felt distinctly harmed by their short runtimes and poorly truncated storytelling. Nonetheless, Winter 2024 managed to give me two of my favorite anime of the year.
Dungeon Meshi
I think there were some reasons to be a little skeptical of Trigger's adaptation of Ryoko Kui's manga. Kui is inarguably one of manga's greatest storytellers. Dungeon Meshi wasn't just operating on the strength of an excellent comedic premise, but her lush calligraphic artwork and sophisticated narrative sensibility. Trigger on the other hand is also both excellent and very funny, but in ways distinctly different from Ryoko Kui. Could the studio adapt both its comedic sensibilities as well as its sharp worldbuilding. Turns out we had little to worry about, Trigger's adaptation is now the only one I could ever conceive of. Dungeon Meshi is a lot of fun, and watching its cast bounce off both new monsters (to eat) and each other never loses its appeal. This is what fantasy anime could be if Isekai didn't spike the entire genre into the dirt.
Brave Bang Bravern!
Bravern was the breakout surprise of Winter 2024. Look, we can't pretend anymore, if you somehow haven't been spoiled on Bravern's excellent twist, I congratulate you. For the rest of us, Bravern's decision to hide a bombastic and hilarious sendup to super robot anime within the framework of military themed real robot anime was a stroke of genius. What really makes it work is an abundant love for both styles of mecha anime and a sense of humor that could only come from someone deeply immersed in the genre. Legendary artist Masami Obari is exactly that person, having had a hand in some of the most iconic frames of animation across the entire spectrum of mecha. In hindsight, few people were better suited to tell its earnestly goofy love story of found family. That said, it is the first show on this list to really feel the squeeze of its short runtime. Bravern is the kind of show that deserved a 52 episode TV run in 1997. It's the kind of show practically developed in a lab to enable all sorts of episodic hijinks. Sure, it probably would have led to some pretty dreadful filler, but if it means getting an episode where Bravern goes to the mall or has to get his diver's license, it'd be a better world to live in than the one we actually do.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
For many people, Frieren's star did not dim in 2024. With the introduction of the mage academy arc, Frieren brings some of this year's most impressive visuals. Even I have to give credit where it's due, Frieren imagines anime magic in ways I've never seen. It feels properly otherworldly and powerful. But also I'm not not so shounen-brained that I forget the absolute slog it takes to reach that point. Personally, the slate of episodes that aired this year are the beginning of its slow but undeniable downturn. Rather than present interesting narrative vignettes tinged with melancholy, Frieren's narrative takes a distinct battle shounen turn going forward. It's still visually impressive, but it never again impresses me the way it did in those early story beats. I'm going to warn you now, if you're still on the hype train and looking forward to season 2; it's only going to get worse.
Spring 2024 was not great to be honest. Bartender and Spice and Wolf are two early 2000s icons that both saw modern a reimagining that barely holds muster compared to their originals. Blue Archive The Animation failed to break the gacha anime curse. Spring 2024 also witnessed the death of arguably the single greatest Japanese creator to ever live. One surprise hit manages to barely salvage an otherwise grim season.
Girls Band Cry
Nina Iseri is the voice of our generation. She's a toxic neurodivergent lesbian barely holding her life together; fending off fraught family dynamics, a flailing creative career, and equally toxic friends she can barely tolerate. Girls Band Cry is the cute girls doing cute things (forming a rock band to middling success) anime for the jaded millennial. Sure, the girls are still going to shout ganbare and play at the festival, but it's heavily tinged by an uncomfortably realistic friction. All of the girls of Togenashi Togeari are facing problems that don't really get solved in a single episode, or even a single season of TV anime. They're real problems, gummy and hard to root out. You learn to live with them because few have the privilege, opportunity, or resources to deal with them in a satisfying manner. And so you play. You play like your life is on the line, because sometimes that's exactly how it feels. Because life is such a goddamn shithole that if you don't do the thing you felt you were put on this planet to do, it isn't worth living. And maybe nobody cares, the villains win, and the history judges you the loser. And you do it all again anyway, because what else are you going to do on this shit of an earth? Roll over and die? No you'll give them the double bird and rock on.
Sand Land
Sand Land is like a lot of works of legendary artist Akira Toriyama. It's a charming adventure with simplistic characters and threadbare plot, pulled together by Toriyama's excellent artwork and punchy storytelling. It's here because it's one of the last things Akira Toriyama worked on before his untimely passing in March. This is not the Toriyama eulogy section, but the weight of his presence and the length of his shadow simply cannot be ignored. Sand Land isn't the best Toriyama work, and this adaptation falls apart for the same reason many Toriyama works do. Because it's not particularly well thought out. But also, it almost doesn't matter. The super saiyan form only exists because he wanted to cut corners. The Cell arc was practically Toriyama free jazz. And nonetheless, they are iconic. All of his work can be described as iconic. He had no equals, no pretenders worthy of notice. Nobody could do it like him and nobody ever will. You watch Sand Land because it just feels good to watch a wholly realized work with his art and characters and charmingly bulbous vehicles. Sometimes that's good enough.
Summer 2024 manages to break the three year long curse of Summer being an anime wasteland. That's not to say it was necessarily great, but it at least had things worth talking about. Compared to the Summers of the last few years? That's practically an oasis.
NieR:Automata Ver1.1a
NieR:Automata Ver1.1a might be one of the best anime adaptations of a video game for a simple reason; it considers the medium it's adapting and finds new interesting ways to capture the essence of the source material. Nier Automata isn't quite a Rebuild of Eva or FF7 Remake, but it twists the details of the game while retaining its essential quality. It performs on stage knowing most off its audience already know the familiar beats, so it's the details in which it performs them that become its most interesting quality. It leans into the strengths of its medium, adding context to moments that would be difficult to implement in a video game. In the end, NieR:Automata Ver1.1a doesn't replace the original nor would I say is it necessarily an ideal way to experience the story, but it's a treat for longtime fans.
Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction
DDDD is a great story fatally hamstrung by a baffling decision in its adaptation to anime. As someone unfamiliar with the original Inio Asano manga, the anime apparently begins with a section of the manga from the final volume. I believe this is meant to be a sort of tease to get buy-in from new viewers. I'll say this, it definitely worked. Being thrown headfirst into a bewildering societal collapse was really effective. The problem is that was never what DDDD was about. And I even grew to accept that. I found myself enthralled by Kadode and Ouran's relationship. The lengths the two go for each other never loses its appeal, and by the end I was deeply invested in seeing how these two crazy kids would make it in this messed up world.
So to find out that was also not the point of DDDD, was ultimately, really disappointing. Reincarnation stories don't work for me. I'm not convinced when you trot out reincarnated forms of characters I know and try to convince me they're exactly the same. They're not. The Kadode and Ouran we see in the final episode are not the Kadode and Ouran I grew to love over the course of their harrowing story of man's inhumanity, its banal cruelty, and inevitable radicalization in the face of an increasingly callous world. That my Kadode and Ouran are treated like a narrative afterthought, the butt of a cosmic pun, in favor of a new and shinier Kadode and Ouran is just always going to leave a bitter taste.
I think the most important thing I can say about Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction is you should skip episode 0. Save it for right before the last episode. I think it'll work much better that way. But at the end of the day, they chose to air it in this order, and I can't be blamed for reacting to the version of the story I experienced.
Fall has always been a strong season traditionally and that broadly holds true this year as well. Fall 2024 has the rest of my favorites from this year, even if a lot of them are known quantities. As Iro muses, perhaps that's just how it has to be these days. Hell, Beastars blindsided us so hard most of us haven't even finished watching it as of this writing. Wasn't all great though; Uzumaki is an unfortunate reminder that truly great art takes more time and resources than most companies are willing to stomach. I've already written plenty on Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance, no need to unlock the eighth gate of hate again.
Sengoku Youko
They finally made a decent Satoshi Mizukami anime. Maybe that's all we can ever hope for. Mizukami is a Glorio favorite, the man's name means something to us. It holds a kind of power, one the anime viewing audience as a whole has yet to truly know. If you knew what I know about Spirit Circle, you would kneel at his feet. So can a competent adaptation of Mizukami's most conventional story convey his spirit? Not really if we're being honest. You constantly feel the rough edges of Sengoku Youko's anime. The lines it jumps, the corners it cuts. All of what is essential to the story is here, and presented ably, but it never really captures the magic. Maybe that's fine, if disappointing. Maybe it's okay if Sengoku Youko doesn't become the next cultural sensation. If even one more person becomes a fan of Mizukami, than the anime has accomplished its fundamental goal.
Dandadan
Dandadan was perfectly situated to take advantage of the current power vacuum in high fidelity shounen adaptations. On a technical level, it's probably the most well drawn manga currently published under the Shounen Jump umbrella. Science Saru isn't the studio you initially think of for such work, and I think it speaks to the unique qualities of both Dandadan and Science Saru that the end result works so well. Dandadan is charming as hell, and its cast of likeable dipshits goes a long way to papering over some of its more generic elements. Science Saru holds up its end of the bargain equally well, imbuing the anime with an electrifying visual energy. It isn't going to change your life, but in the arena of well made battle shounen, it's first among its current peers. I think the only real sticking point is the place it chooses to end its first season. These weren't issues in the original publication as you'd simply wait a week for the next chapter. In the world where 26 episode anime are becoming increasingly rare, splitting Dandadan's story into two 13 episode seasons creates some weird pacing issues. In that regard, I'd consider it another victim of how modern anime production is handled, even if it looked fantastic every week.
Dragon Ball Daima
It's Dragon Ball, just like you remember it. Or not? Depending on what era of Dragon Ball you grew up with, Daima is an odd one. The premise of making everyone a kid again is an obvious sendup to the original Dragon Ball, as is its more adventurous framing. But the fisticuffs and narrative setup seem heavily indebted to Dragon Ball Z. Really the only Dragon Ball that Daima seems content to ignore are GT and Super and you know what, that's fine by me. Daima is the last Dragon Ball with significant contribution from Akira Toriyama, and it shows in all the best ways. Maybe that's why it's worth celebrating. It's irreverent and cartoonish in a way only Toriyama can get away with. Like so many legacy franchises, Dragon Ball is burdened with the weight of generational expectations. Everyone wants something different from it. And that weight can be difficult to escape. Perhaps only its original creator could treat it with such casual flippancy. It's Toriyama's Dragon Ball, and he can do with it as he pleases. Helps that when Daima goes hard, it's the first TV Dragon Ball in decades to have real, actual, art direction. Hell of a parting gift all said and done.
I must confess I don't know if I would have bothered with Daima in a world where Toriyama was still around. It felt like he'd be with us forever, and I'd have all the time in the world to disregard his modern output until the mood stuck me. But that's not really a privilege I have anymore. There is now a permanent number of Toriyama works that will ever exist. In the face of such a grim reality, how could I not find joy in Daima? It's the least I can do to honor the greatest to ever do it.
Mecha-Ude
The passion project of a crowdfunded up-and-comer studio, Mecha-Ude is a scrappy underdog that punches well above its weight. A common refrain I've seen is that it feels a lot like an unearthed Trigger anime. I definitely see the comparisons and I'm sure the folks at TriF studio would see it as a compliment, but I want to emphasize that it's is a wholly enjoyable work on its own merits. Mecha-Ude's greatest quality is its consistency to its tone and style. I've watched a lot of anime originals over the years. Sakugan, Metallic Rouge, Fena the Pirate Princess, Appare Ranman, High Card, more than I could possibly remember right now. They all fell victim to nearly the exact same problem; they took themselves too seriously. All of these anime originals started off as high energy adventurous romps with fun premises. Nearly all of them fell apart in the second half as they clumsily attempted to introduce ill-fitting pathos to their characters.
Mecha-Ude breaks the curse, almost defiantly so. Characters will be dealt seemingly fatal blows. Rather than play up the drama, the rest of the cast will continue on with the exact same dipshit antics they had five episodes ago. It knows that you know what kinda show this is, so why stop now? Mecha-Ude never once pretends to be anything greater than it actually is. Paradoxically, that makes it greater than most of its peers.
That isn't to say it was a flawless presentation. Like many of the anime I've talked about this year, you feel the skinned knees and elbows of its production. It hides it with bravado, but you can't help but wonder just how much better an experience it would have been with double the episode length. So is Mecha-Ude good? I don't know, the plot glues a brick to the pedal, most of the cast could be summarized in a handful of words, and the sequel hook at the end is so bad it's legitimately hilarious. Is Mecha-Ude fun? Hell yes it is.
Look Back
I've already written plenty on Look Back, the animated feature film based on Tatsuki Fujimoto's one shot manga. My previous post on it was more an internal self reflection on its themes and how they personally affected me. So rather than navel gaze some more, I'll just say Look Back is my favorite piece of media from this year. I'd say Look Back is the only thing that aired in 2024 that I loved unconditionally. It feels wholly uncompromised in the realization of its vision. Look Back perfectly captures the story of Fujino and Kyomoto, united less by love of art, as they are by an instinctual primordial need to create. Look Back doesn't glorify the tortured artist, nor does it attempt to claim that suffering makes great art. Instead it recognizes art's sinister allure. That it is inherently human to create, and we would be spiritually empty without it. In the face of something so important, so fundamental to our being, how could we not sacrifice everything for it?
Thunderbolt Fantasy Season 4
Watching Thunderbolt Fantasy is maybe the single best decision I've made in years. I can't think of another series that's brought me so much joy and entertainment. Wandering swordsman Shou Fu Kan's story never loses its luster, even as its cast and universe expand well beyond the breaking point. Season 4 retains all the things I've grown to love about Thunderbolt Fantasy, even as the specter of its finale looms.
There's no way around it, season 4 is the biggest casualty of 2024's recurring theme of production issues. Originally slated for 5 seasons and a film, Covid and flagging financials have cut it down to 4 seasons and a film. You feel this cut everywhere. Aborted storylines, truncated character arcs, and some really egregious narrative payoffs that feel rushed at best and perfunctory at worst. It's such a shame because it's not like season 4 is bad, there's just not enough of it for the amount of narrative they attempt to cover. What will happen to Rou Fu You now that he's embraced his demonic heritage? Can Shou Fu Kan stop Kasei Meiko and his Divine Swarm from conquering the mortal realm? What is Azibelpher's endgame? Will Rin Setsu A pull off his greatest scheme yet; tricking himself? Will Tenkou Kishou's mech come back? Did we forget about the gun? All these questions and more, (might be) answered in Thunderbolt Fantasy The Movie!
You understand my trepidation? Season 4 barely managed to address even a percentage of these plot points. Now I have to put all my faith in a 90 minute movie to end it all in a satisfying manner worthy of Thunderbolt Fantasy's peerless craftsmanship? It would drive anyone mad.
But it's the same show where a wuxia alchemist pulled out a minigun against his hated rival, who in turn, jumped into a giant robot and pummeled him to death with his man sized fists. That same robot that is almost assuredly just a literal human being in a foam suit. I need to constantly reiterate; all this melodrama, action, and operatic spectacle is being accomplished with puppets. It rocks. At the end of the day, Thunderbolt Fantasy commits itself to some of the greatest acts I've ever seen in the art of puppetry, maybe visual media entirely. It has no equal.
Despite writing thousands of words complaining about all the disappointing ways in which media has been truncated, I still enjoyed many of the things I watched in 2024. I think at heart I'm an idealist. I'll always wish for a better version of the things I like, especially if it feels attainable. I hesitate to simply blame the realities of the world we live in and the market these works must exist in. But it's undeniable. Our favorite shows are shorter, split up, distributed oddly, and suffering for it. Let's be real, I don't feel like I have much to look forward to in 2025 but let's hope next year's anime adapt better to these changes, one way or another.