I've updated my great anime openings file to take out the broken links youtube took away and added new links youtube made available. The most important change is that the openings I most wanted to show, Amagami SS's, are now revealed in their full glory.
In addition, I want to expand my top 50 to a top 60, and move some spots around, to take into account how many good series were being left out of the rankings. One extra detail I wanted to expand upon is what portion of these top 60 were aired in 2010. This is the greatest year of all time for anime, and as a result, for art, and as a result, for the total value of Good in the world, and putting a * next to any anime show that aired in 2010 is a good way of proving it.
Series:
1. Clannad
2. One Piece *
3. Code Geass
4. Naruto *
5. Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni
6. K-On! *
7. Dragonball Kai *
8. Haruhi Suzumiya *
9. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha *
10. Crest of the Stars
11. Tengen Toppa Gurrenn Lagann
12. Kanon
13. Fairy Tail *
14. Katanagatari *
15. To Aru Majutsu no Index/ To Aru Kagaku no Railgun *
16. Angel Beats *
17. Cowboy Bebop
18. Inuyasha *
19. Record of Lodoss War
20. Sailor Moon
21. Vandread
22. Full Metal Panic!
23. Hayate no Gotoku
24. Toradora!
25. Da Capo
26. Ef
27. Sora no Woto *
28. The World God Only Knows *
29. Kobato *
30. Card Captor Sakura
31. Galaxy Angel
32. Air
33. Evangelion
34. Samurai Champloo
35. 12 Kingdoms
36. Battle Athletes
37. Working! *
38. Ranma 1/2
39. Uuchuu no Stellvia
40. Rurouni Kenshin
41. Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu *
42. Basilisk
43. Utawarerumono
44. Saki
45. Prince of Tennis
46. Major *
47. Mahoromatic
48. Ore no Immouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai *
49. Zero no Tsukaima
50. Bakuman *
51. Pretty Cure *
52. Berserk
53. Claymore
54. Valkyria Chronicles
55. Guyver
56. Akane Iro no Somaru Saka
57. Kimi ni Todoke *
58. Martian Succesor Nadesico
59. Spice and Wolf
60. Negima! Magister Magi Negi. *
Let's look at this closely. 6 out of the top 10 anime series of all time were expanded upon this year. That's insane. 11 of the top 20 anime series were either expanded upon or newly created this year. Still a majority! Overall, 22 of the top 60 anime series of all time were expanded upon or newly minted this year. So 1/3 of the total value of anime was on display this year alone. This is a sort of world-changing epochal event. It's not like 1 year produced 1/3 of all good movies, or 1/3 of all good ancient greek plays, or 1/3 of all good classical music. But 1/3 of all good anime happened this year. What kind of prospects does that have for next year's lineup? Actually, I'm sure it will be worse than this year. Surely nothing can match a peak like this. But odds are it will be much higher quality than average. As will the year after that, and so on, because quite simply, the average has moved up. Way up. We haven't seen the last of anime's progress.
I wanted to put a few words in for my newest inclusions. Pretty Cure is a children's anime, one of the most popular in Japan, that for all its silly and slow parts, has many beautiful and moving moments in it. It now has hundreds of episodes in its library which makes it very difficult to compete with if you're just a 13 or 26 episode series.
Guyver comes from one of the oldest manga series in Japan, which is frustratingly still going and has barely made any progress. Actually, Berserk is the same in this manner. Because of this, both series are extremely incomplete, lacking any sort of resolution, but what we have seen from the series has all been awesome. The originality of the Guyver design is just magnificent.
Akane Iro no Somaru Saka is a cute and funny romance story. Kimi ni Todoke is the opposite, a very dramatic and realistic romance story, but extremely well done in how it reaches out to socially awkward people and tells the little stories of the heart that mostly go unheard. Kimi ni Todoke is one of the best selling manga in Japan and the anime is set to continue in 2011, so this ranking may go up over time.
Nadesico is a sort of meta-anime, that pokes fun at other anime while still trying to convey its own story with passion and style. In some ways it works, like the character Ruri Hoshino, still beloved by anime fans to this day. And in some ways it didn't, making no sense or featuring truly obnoxious characters. In the past, this used to rank among the best. Now by expanding my rankings to 60 I can finally include it in the current 'best of' competition. We've come a long ways since Nadesico.
Spice and Wolf is a beautifully drawn and interesting story about merchants in a stylized Medieval past. It avoids the normal swords and sorcery plots and tries to find more interest in different aspects of past culture. The ambitious project didn't quite succeed though, because many of the episodes in the series are extremely boring. Still, it was good enough to reach the expanded rankings.
Lastly there's Negima! Magister Magi Negi. This anime is frustrating, because it took one of the best, if not the best manga ever made, and turned it into only the 60th best anime. How did it do this? How did it butcher such an amazing source material? Well, only by changing practically everything in the manga to something else. The endless filler of added, non-sourced content, the constant cutting of scenes that were in the manga but never reached the screen, and just the general determination by the animators to not understand why Negima is great or treat it with any reverence, is one of the worst travesties in anime history. Someday I hope Negima will become popular enough, and the outcry loud enough, that the entire series might be redone like Dragonball and Full Metal Alchemist were. For now, we can look forward to the forthcoming Negima! movie though.
If the 2011 anime season is anything like the 2010 season, I will have to expand my rankings yet again to fit in more names into this constantly bubbling brew. I can't wait. :).
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