#and Princess Jellyfish and Sarazanmai and Kakushigoto

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

Top 5 anime you think are criminally underrated!

This is a really good question, and it was VERY difficult to keep myself to only 5. These are all anime that I think deserve a much wider viewership! (Plus five more!)

I ended up spending waaayyyy longer on this than I thought, I can’t imagine how much I would have written if you’d said top 10. I can literally talk about anime forever. Here’s some I wholeheartedly recommend.

1. Shojo Kageki Revue Starlight (Action, drama, romance)

This is my newest love, as of yesterday, when I binged the whole thing. The best way I can describe it is by mashing up other anime. Take Revolutionary Girl Utena, iron out about three layers of metaphor, and trim off all of the dark themes related to the Rose Bride. Then throw it in a blender with Madoka Magica and Love Live!, add half a cup of Gay Concentrate, and serve up the result: A character-driven drama about girls at a performing arts school, who settle their differences in magical-girl-fantasy duels styled as impossibly gorgeous theatrical stage-combat musical numbers. Beyond the flash and high concept, there’s a well-written cast, solid emotional core, and really engaging plot.

2. The Eccentric Family (Drama, comedy)

This show is my favorite genre of fantasy; mythical creatures living in the modern world, right under humans’ noses. In this series, humans only know tanuki as the cute little raccoon-dogs, but tanuki are really sentient shapeshifters whose goals are to outsmart the humans who live in the cities, pester the tengu who rule the heavens, live a life of freedom and trickery, and not end up on the inside of a hunter’s trap. The story follows a family of a mother and four sons whose widely-respected father was killed to end up in a human’s hot pot, as they try to enjoy their lives, live up to his imposing reputation, and unravel the increasingly suspicious circumstances of his death.

I have called this one “deceptively light-hearted” when describing it. My friend got halfway through the first season and came back to me with the verdict, “consider me fucking deceived.” This show has weight and does not pull its emotional punches, but neither does it ever stumble into becoming grimdark. Its worldbuilding is solid and the characters are all fantastically developed. Plus I wrote a whole post about one of the main antagonists(?) who I hadn’t even mentioned here.

3. Dennou Coil (Mystery, sci-fi)

Dennou Coil is a masterclass in worldbuilding, in my opinion. It’s a near-future sci-fi world, basically if Google Glass had taken off and become as common as cell phones are today. Many people don’t see the real world, they see the virtual textures of the world as they’re rendered through the glasses. Kids in one city have learned to mess around with codes, collecting tradeable fragments that break off the edges where the system glitches, chasing viruses that hide in pockets of obselete code in abandoned areas of the city where the software doesn’t get updated often. They spend their time after school saving virtual pets from being accidentally deleted by the city’s antivirus, trading tall tales about kids who get caught by the antivirus and get their glasses bricked, and spinning urban legends about ghosts waiting just behind anything that’s visibly rendered, waiting to steal kids when they least expect it. Every detail they introduce is critical to laying the foundation for the mystery that forms the show’s plot.

Everything about this world feels real in a way I’ve never seen in a sci-fi anime. It’s all grounded in a clear understanding of programming, and lives by show-don’t-tell. The stakes aren’t life-and-death; the kids tagging glitches like graffiti to distract the city’s antivirus software are only at risk of ruining their glasses, at least at first. The plot and escalation is perfectly-paced, and the mystery is so satisfying to piece together as it unfolds.

4. ID:Invaded (Sci-fi, action, thriller, murder mystery)

This show is like Psycho-Pass meets Silence of the Lambs. To catch a serial killer, you need to think like a killer, and nobody does that better than killers. A contraption called an “id well” can manifest an uncaught killer’s unconscious mind as a bizarre, unique, deadly terrain driven by stream-of-consciousness, and convicted murderers turned “detectives” dive into these wells to try to solve the mystery each well presents and discern the identity of other killers before they can strike again.

This show is a tightly-written, perfectly paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller. The two layers of mysteries inside and outside of the wells balance high-octane, big-screen action with tight, tense realism. Plus the soundtrack is an absolute banger.

5. Ping Pong the Animation (drama, sports)

Imagine if I told you that there was a show that, in 11 episodes, unpacked how patterns of relationships are repeated across generations, how the tradeoff between talent, practice, and who you are outside of your achievements can scar the spirits of kids, and what it feels like to wrestle with the tension between your core understanding of yourself and how others expect you to be. Imagine if I told you that every major character goes through massive restructurings of their fundamental sense of self and how they see others, and that every single arc comes to a well-rounded and satisfying end. Imagine if the animation style pushed the limits of both realism and absurdity, landing somewhere between rotoscoping and caricature, pushing the impact of action and stretching the character’s expressiveness without betraying faces that are animated like real human people. Imagine that it had a dub so fantastic that it sits next to Baccano and Cowboy Bebop in my mind, shows where the cast threw themselves into their roles with their whole hearts.

Now imagine that I told you that this story is told in the context of high schoolers playing ping pong, and that it’s arguably the best show I’ve ever seen. Go watch this show.

[nonchalantsanders]

The Sides and Anime They Watch, Because I’m a Weeb and I Can:

I tagged all the anime mentioned in order. Please feel free to add-on your thoughts!

Starting off with Virgil because the thought that sparked this idea was me contemplating if Virgil watched Death Note. Canonically? Maybe, but I’d rather like to think that he watched the first two episodes because he thought it matched his aesthetic, but he soon realized just how much killing was really involved and then dropped it because that’s the last thing he needs to think about. Death Note is a little too realistic for him to be comfortable with. He enjoys watching high production fantasy that has a darker vibe, but it always ends well for the heroes. His favorite anime is Soul Eater, and I will die on that hill. Honorable mentions: Fire Force (same creator) and Demon Slayer.

Whenever Virgil is in a particularly bad mood, Patton will do his best to coax him into watching iyashikei (healing) anime. Virgil’s favorite show to watch with Patton is My Roommate is Cat, but he would rather watch the next episode of Death Note than to tell Patton that. This works both ways: whenever Patton is really low Virgil will SUBTLY tell Patton that they should watch the next episode of How to Keep a Mummy or K-ON.

Patton will watch really anything. He enjoys iyashikei, he loves watching good ol’ shounen protagonists winning, romance anime makes him soft, and he ADORES a good, simple comedy. He can just hop in to what anyone else is watching a have a good time. He has many favorite anime including but not limited to Kakushigoto, Little Witch Academia, Fairy Tail, Sailor Moon, Princess Jellyfish, and Saiki K. Yes, he has found a reason to cry to every single title he’s seen.

This turned out to be way longer than I thought it would. Roman, Logan, Janus, and Remus under the cut! 

Patton and Roman have the most similar tastes and motivations in anime. If they’re watching a show together it’s a show that is either hype af, or gay af. They watch a lot of big name shows together like My Hero Academia and Yuri on Ice. 

On his own, Roman watches a lot (and I mean ALOT) of shoujo and romance. He is literally in love with Prince Izana from Snow White with the Red Hair, and there’s nothing you could say to me that would change my mind. He also loves lowkey projecting onto Aoi Tsubaki from Kakuriyo because of how many kind and pretty boys there are. He is sad, and lonely, and these shows fill a bit of that void. His favorite anime is Given. Period. Roman is such a Haruki kinnie. Tell me I’m wrong. You can’t.

Logan watches the least anime out of the sides... or so they all think. The truth is that Patton showed him Dr. Stone one day because “it’s super sciencey” but Logan didn’t give it a fair chance because he was stuck on the fact that is literally impossible for a beam of light to turn the outer layer of only HUMAN organic material into stone, and then have the humans still be alive hundreds of years later. Weeks after watching the first three episodes, he started really thinking about some of the technicalities and continued to watch episode 4. He took notes the entire time and had finished season 1 in a day. He then wrote a 30+ page analysis in his free time discussing why the things that Senku made should or should not have worked... as a passion project. 

He then went on to do similar things with shows like Cells at Work and even Hetalia believe it or not. He even used the metaphorical ways that the countries in Hetalia interact as a way to compare the way he interacts with the others. He also really connects with Aggretsuko on a personal level.

Janus is actually the one who watches the least anime, but nobody believes him when he says that. He’s seen a few episodes of some big titles here and there, but nothing hits different like Talentless Nana. It’s a new show this season so I won’t say much, other than the fact that it is, without a doubt, Janus’s favorite thing. Every new episode is a game of seeing if he can figure out Nana’s plan before she reveals it. He loves outwitting the people who are doing the outwitting. He kins Nana. That’s just a fact. I’m sorry.

Remus? Short answer: ℌệ𝔫𝔱ằ𝔦 (lol). Long answer: Sarazanmai, Blood Blockade Battlefront and Akudama Drive (he thinks he kins Cutthroat, but he’s really more of a Hoodlum). He watched Sarazanmai for the butt humor, but stayed for the emotional, in-depth character arcs and healthy MLM representation. The problem is nobody else can trust a show that Remus recommends especially when the butt stuff is so heavy in the first few episodes, so he has nobody to talk about it with. He is left with the suffering of not being able to express his love for the show. This is the only thing about Remus that I will ever be able to relate to.

Because Patton wanted Remus to feel appreciated, they watched all 12 episodes of Sarazanmai together over the span of the 3 days. It was a bumpy ride, but Patton ended up adoring it in the end and cried.

Please add more! What other shows do some of the sides watch together? Do you think one of the sides wouldn’t like one of the show I listed? Did I miss a show that they would like?

I post and reblog anime and manga stuff on my main @nonchalantatall if you want to discuss any of the shows I mentioned! :)