These are the looks you get if you haven’t watched Migi and Dali yet.
Around November I found myself wondering if this year was truly one of the weakest years for anime ever. It didn’t help that 2022 was maybe the best year for anime ever, so this year suffered by comparison. Then I realised I had fallen behind on a ton of anime, so jumped back in and caught up on everything I had meant to watch but forgot or fallen behind on. Once I reached Christmas and could finally pull a complete list together, suddenly the year looked a whole lot better. Turns out watching anime is a good way to discover that some anime are good actually.
2023’s 2024 Anime of the Year
As always, I only rank anime which ended this year. So if it’s still ongoing, it doesn’t make the list. In my mad dash to get anime from this year actually finished, I fell behind on the anime I know aren’t going to finish this year (or in the case of Undead Unluck, didn’t start at all). The winner was always going to be a toss up between Frieren and Apothecary Diaries. I thought it would be the latter for most of December, but this Christmas I had a dream I was on an adventure with Frieren and Winnie the Pooh. That was the best anime I’d seen all year, so Frieren takes the award.
10: Pluto
When Pluto is a story of the detective robot Gesicht hunting down clues about a string of murders of humans and robots, and how it connects to a brutal war three years ago, Pluto was a genuine top 3 candidate for Anime of the Year. It’s thoughtful, incredibly well-written, that tackles some real deep philosophical questions like good science fiction should. I wish Pluto wasn’t a retelling of Astro Boy and could be its own thing. That way some of the more egregious plot issues I had would be less prevalent (why is Atom now the main character, I don’t care about him, also where the fuck do robot children come from). It’s a story that begs you to think deeply about its world and characters while also being a world whose structure falls apart if you think about it too much. An incredible anime in many ways, but a deeply flawed one too.
9: Heavenly Delusion
While the ending left a bad taste in my mouth, Heavenly Delusion was one of the more unique takes on an anime post-apocalypse, more so for the tone than anything. I like its complete indifference towards ever really explaining anything. You are left to figure out what’s happening in this world by yourself as these two characters goof about and ponder their purpose in life and who they truly are. It’s a show that tackles some very tough subjects while never losing its odd sense of humour, which made it more fun to be strung along by. Another flawed anime, but goddam do I love my philosophical science fiction. Give me more of this stuff.
8: Hell’s Paradise
The longer this trend of isekai stories set in a medieval fantasy RPG world with adventurers taking quests from taverns to go to dungeons to fight slimes and goblins continues, the more I appreciate anime that have put an incredible amount of detail into their world building and creating something unique. Hell’s Paradise gets a little bit shounen-y in the back half, but there’s a moment about halfway through where the nerdy character starts to breakdown how strange the use of religious symbolism is on the island that my appreciation for the show took on a whole new level. This is fantasy world-building with a purpose! Once you’ve established that layer, suddenly all the shounen battle stuff I’m way more invested in. I want these characters to explore this island more, for them to learn more, and learn how their relationship with themselves and each other comes out via the symbolism used on the island.
7: Oshi no Ko
This year I enjoyed an idol anime. Yes it’s a very different kind of idol anime. It’s about how truly messed up the entertainment industry is. The life of lies you live to fulfill the dreams of those who watch and how it can destroy those who interact in that system. The way it can mess up the live of kids and the toxic relationships audiences have with people who have only just hit puberty, or sometimes not even that. But it’s still an idol anime, and I say that because it still trades heavily on the dreams of those who wanted to be idols. It sold the dream as being legitimate and something you can aspire towards and be proud of. So congrats to Oshi no Ko for turning me into an idol fan temporarily. That’s the most astonishing accomplishment of any anime this year.
6: Spy X Family Season 2
You will be incapable of ever getting a proper critical review of Spy X Family out of me. It completely shuts down my critics brain as it descends into warm fuzzies as I curl up in a blanket to yell “watch out Anya!” at the screen, like I too am six years old and watching Bondman on TV. It’s my happy place anime, one that just makes me smile by existing. The best you will get out of me is that I’m delighted the show finally remembered that one of the parents has a side hustle as an assassin and gave Yor her own damn arc for a change. It was an arc that did her justice to, and did tackle the question of what her purpose even was anymore in a way that left me satisfied. Now let’s not wait another 30+ episodes before she gets another arc of her own.
5: Dr. Stone: New World
For as much joy as I get from Dr Stone, I feel like people seem to have forgotten it exists as I don’t see much buzz about it anymore. So let me tell you all that Dr Stone is still fantastic. It’s still giddy with enthusiasm for science, but really it’s enthusiasm for mankind’s ability to innovate to get what they want. The moments of magic where a new invention fulfills someone’s dream is still there. The cast is getting a bit too big now, and the new Soyuz fella was a complete damp squib of a character, but we’re getting close to the end now. We actually have some idea of what caused the stone apocalypse (it was Hatsune Miku), but I still laugh with glee when Senku announces they are now going to go to the moon or whatever new ridiculous scheme he has now.
4: Blue Lock
Give a horror manga author the task of writing a shounen sports manga, and you get the wondrous creation that is Blue Lock. Aka the soccer battle royale, where teen boys are pushed to their mental limit and experience breakdowns in the name of surviving to the next round, lest they collapse down through the LOSER GATE! It’s a little more shouneny and a little less psychological horror than I was hoping for, but it uses the shounen formula expertly and the spice of the battle royale and its inherent ridiculous concept lets it all come together to be something genuinely special.
3: Migi and Dali
Migi and Dali is simultaneously one of the weirdest, most unsettling, yet most heartfelt and uplifting anime of the year. It’s a show in which a guy catfished his own twin brother in drag, or where another sat in a diaper and proclaimed they would become the perfect toddler. It’s weirdness will keep you transfixed, occasionally going “yup, there sure did go there”. But beneath that they’re hiding a heartfelt message of accepting people for who they are, and how beneath their imperfect exteriors lies hearts of gold who want to show love and experience love. Yet beneath that again it contains one of the best mystery horror thriller anime ever. And then beneath that they’re hiding the most touching story of found families, without ever losing that original weirdness that made the anime catch ones eye in the first place. Please do not let Migi and Dali disappear. It is an absolute gem of an anime and would be my anime of the year if we took out sequels.
2: Vinland Saga Season 2
I don’t think I enjoyed watching the second season of Vinland Saga. It’s a gut-wrenching anime that pulls zero punches nor sugarcoats anything it ever commits to with some truly powerful, hard-hitting messages. The themes are delivered with such thorough confidence in what its saying, about the nature of bravery and war and suffering and faith. It spends ages building up to those moments where it can deliver the core thematic lines that get at the very soul of what the series has been building up to. It’s a work of art…but yeah, I did find myself sometimes wishing I could just go “wow cool viking” like I did for season one.
1: Attack on Titan
That was as good an ending as I could realistically ever have hoped for. The theme of war and hatred will continue, but that doesn’t mean you should stop fighting for peace. After spending years hearing this would be the point at which Titan fell apart, with “this” being a different point in the story every time, it was satisfying to reach the end and realise those folks were full of shit, like they always were. But now we’re at the end, I want to take this final rating as a rating of Attack on Titan as a whole. Its cinematography with the way the titan fights were shot, with the scouts spidermanning their way around their targets. Or the genuinely unique world with tons of detail put into things like uniforms or architecture that you could spend ages digging into. Or the pacing and the way it knew how to do the rise and fall of drama and action. At some point I will need to go back to the very start and watch it all over again, but as of right now, Attack on Titan is genuinely in contention for one of my favourite anime of all time.
