Every year, there are four seasons worth of anime to watch. Some shows might stretch over multiple seasons, whilst others can only be as short as four episodes. I’m going to take a look back at the anime I watched over this past year.
A new year starts with the winter season. The anime I watched from 2013’s winter season included Ai Mai Mi, Mangirl! and Yama no Susume. Each one of those was a series of shorts, not one episode longer than five minutes.
Ai Mai Mi shows a group of girls in a manga club, who do all sorts of outlandish things. It is based upon a yonkoma, and comedy is very much its focus.
Mangirl! is also about a group of girls in a manga club, hence the slightly unfortunate title. Unlike Ai Mai Mi, the episodes focused on the girls’ efforts to produce a successful manga.
Encouragement of Climb was about a girl who dislike going outside arranging to climb a mountain with her close friend, who happens to love doing that. There is a new season of this due next year, with longer episodes.
With the shorts out of the way, there were two anime series I watched with normal length episodes. First was Vividred Operation, which could be described as Power Rangers meets Strike Witches.
The other was Senran Kagura, an anime about ninja high school girls who become more powerful by taking off their clothes. Both this and Vividred Operation had a fair bit of fanservice, but both were actually fairly enjoyable to watch as well.
Moving on to the spring season, Absolute Defence Leviathan and Yuyushiki made their way onto my watchlist. The former is about dragon girls who are recruited by a fairy in order to defend their home town from evil, whilst the latter is a slice-of-life anime about three girls in a ‘data-processing club’.
There was also A Certain Scientific Railgun S, the second season of Railgun. During this season, the Sisters arc was the main focus.
Finally, Attack on Titan started during this season. I may not have started watching it from the beginning, but I’m damn glad I eventually got around to watching it. Watching the humans battle the Titans was awesome.
Summer was were I truly started to keep up with each new season properly. Railgun S and Attack on Titan continued through this season, the former showing an anime-only arc and the latter showing the Survey Corps’ struggle against the Female Titan.
There was Fantasista Doll, mixing the card game and magical girl genres; il sole penetra illusioni ~ Day Break Illusion, which had a darker take on the magical girl genre (though not as dark as Puella Magi Madoka Magica); and also there was Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya, the Fate universe’s take on the genre.
Chronicles of the Going Home Club, and the brilliant Kiniro Mosaic had the schoolgirl slice-of-life series covered, whilst Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C3 was a sort of alternate take on girls with guns.
Hyperdimension Neptunia The Animation had something for the gamers, even if they hadn’t played any of the games in that series.
Gatchaman Crowds told a brilliant story, involving an evil alien’s scheme to destroy the world through social networking.
Finally, there was Senki Zesshou Symphogear G. One of my all time favourite things; I just love everything about that anime.
That brings us to the Autumn season. Miss Monochrome -The Animation- provided short, three-minute laughs once a week.
Kyoto Animation turned their hand to a modern fantasy tale with Beyond the Boundary, whilst there was more traditional fantasy thanks to Outbreak Company.
This season’s video game adaptation was BlazBlue Alter Memory, based on the series of fighting games.
Galilei Donna had the Ferrari sisters travel around the world, whereas Coppelion was set within Japan’s Old Capital which had been devastated by radiation.
Wanna be the Strongest in the World! actually proved to be better than I expected after it got through the first half; not bad for an anime about an idol becoming a professional wrestler.
Ah, there was another video game adaptation this season with a mere four episodes. That was Pokémon Origins, retelling the story of the first generation of Pokémon games. Well worth a watch if you are a fan.
Finally, there are two more anime that will continue into the winter 2014 season. The first of those is Log Horizon, which shows what happens after gamers are trapped in the world of fantasy MMORPG Elder Tale. It has been fun to watch thus far; I imagine that will continue to be the case.
The other anime that will continue on into the next season is Kill La Kill. Created by Studio Trigger, a few of its staff were also responsible for bringing us Gurren Lagann. It definitely lives up to its reputation as Gurren Lagann‘s spiritual successor.
So, that was what I watched during 2013. Kill La Kill, Log Horizon, Attack on Titan, Kiniro Mosaic, Gatchaman Crowds, Non Non Biyori, Pokémon Origins and Senki Zesshou Symphogear G are my personal highlights. Senran Kagura, Vividred Operation and Wanna be the Strongest in the World! provided some nice surprises as well, considering they didn’t appear to much more than pure fanservice at first.
A fairly enjoyable year of anime in my opinion, and I am very much looking forward to what 2014 will bring our way.
Rory Muses 