Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru So Desu yo?:
Man, what a long title for a series. Anyway, this series was clearly written for teenage boys. It's a very shallow series dedicated to flashy things like bunny girls, explosions, showing off, and being a bigshot. I don't think this could ever develop into a good series, but it isn't exactly bad either. I thought the female heroines were pretty cool. I like how quickly they adapted to entering a new world, they didn't think twice about it and stayed in control of their lives and destinies. And I think a world full of various contests that make use of people's supernatural powers is a fun idea. I mean, if you have superpowers, everything on Earth must seem pretty lame. Suppose you're Superman -- would a game of Tennis be fun anymore? What if high level math required no mental effort and just by looking at the problem you knew the solution -- would you enjoy being a mathematician? A physicist? If everything comes easily to someone they just want to keep pushing their limits until something is finally hard again. If you can easily climb Everest you just want to try climbing K2 or something instead, Everest no longer interests you.
Perhaps people with super powers should take on the US army or the police force and overthrow their country, becoming world dictators. Code Geass ran with that idea, and it worked really well. But supposing you're someone with super powers but zero interest in politics and zero ambition, but you do want to do something challenging and thus fun with your life, going to a fantasy world and competing with other super powered individuals is as good an idea as any.
I'm a little jealous of these characters' "problems" though. While they're whining about how easy life is because they're all-powerful, there are plenty of people on Earth who are crippled, diseased, hungry, poor, and oppressed who would love to have just an iota of their power. These superior beings don't give a whit about all the unfortunate humans around them, though, and just run off to play games among themselves. Isn't this a little selfish? Why didn't they try to contribute to their communities instead? I guess you could say that the authorities currently in power wouldn't welcome their interference, and so the only real option they have if they wanted to help others would be to overthrow their governments and become dictators. I guess if the choice is terrorist or gamer, a lot of people would prefer gamer, at which point I can't fault these characters for choosing that way. I still prefer Lelouche though, who actually made use of his power to improve the world. Oh well.
Long story short, Mondaiji-tachi is worth watching so long as you don't expect too much from it. So let's add it to my winter series worth watching list:
#1. Smile Precure
#2. Love Live
#3. Little Busters
#4. Shin Sekai Yori
#5. Da Capo III
#6. Bakuman
#7. Fairy Tail
#8. One Piece
#9. Hunter x Hunter
#10. Naruto
#11. AKB0048
#12. Oreshura
#13. Vividred Operation
#14. Haganai
#15. Chihayafuru
#16. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
#17. Kotoura-san
#18. Tamako Market
#19. Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru So Desu yo?
#20. Sasami-san@Ganbaranai
#21. Robotics;Notes
#22. Yama no Susume
#23. Mangirl
The first episode of Chihayafuru season 2 was also excellent. The introduction of a new character was a fresh breeze to the setting and it's fun seeing her fit in with the rest of the crew.
The winter season has created a separate problem though. Right when my top 120 series were finally going to represent only pure perfect gems, I've amassed nearly enough series watched to expand to a top 130 series. I still need to watch 5 new series up to at least episode three to qualify to expand my rankings, but conversely that means I've watched 25 of the 30 necessary to add in the next best 10 to my list. If I just let things stand like this, I'm going to have to wait until April before I extend my rankings, after watching three episodes of 5 new series from the spring anime season. But who could possibly wait that long when I'm already so close to qualifying from just this winter season? So I'll compromise. Officially, I'll stick to just my top 120 list, but unofficially, I'll add in 121-128, which is the amount watching 25 of 30 shows would legally permit, into this post, as I guess a preview of my top 130 which will have to wait until April.
So let's talk about 121-128!
#121: Vividred Operation. I think Vividred Operation is going to be great. I'm not sure yet, having only one episode to judge it by. But since this is just a provisional list I'll bet on it.
#122: Chihayafuru: I think the second season of Chihayafuru will be enough to put it over the top and include it into my rankings. It was a good first season and presumably this will make the series twice as good.
#123: Ore no Kanojo to
Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru! : I only have the first episode to go by, but I really like the way this plot has been set up and Yukari Tamura is such an amazing voice actress. I think this series will climb into my rankings, certainly by the time April comes by.
#124: History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi: This anime is a very sad example of an anime ending right when the manga was getting interesting. The manga has since that time more than doubled in size, none of it being animated. However, recently a couple of anime oav's started animating the Yami/Yomi arc that has been the feature for the rest of the manga thus far. They were excellent oav's, and more importantly, they implicitly promise that eventually a new anime will begin covering the enormous amount of material the manga has been making all these years since the anime ended. If I go with the promise that eventually more Kenichi will be made, it definitely deserves a spot in my rankings.
Since I've never discussed why I like Kenichi before, I guess I'll go a little deeper into this story's plot. One day a guy is walking along when he sees a girl who's about to be bullied. He runs in to save her but just gets beaten up. Then it turns out that she's a master martial artist and beats up the bullies to save him. Kenichi realizes several important things at this moment -- Martial Arts are extremely cool -- He's in love with this girl -- This girl will never respect him unless he becomes as strong as she is, both physically and mentally/talentedly/spiritually -- It's useless standing up for things unless you also have the strength to follow through with your convictions. Because of this, he makes a life altering decision of joining her dojo, and training under what just so happens to be the greatest martial arts masters in the world. Rather than learning just one style of martial arts, it turns out that Miu, this cute martial arts girl, belongs to an organization of martial arts masters of every stripe. One is a master swordswoman, another knows Jujitsu, a third knows Karate, a fourth knows Kenpo, a fifth knows Muay Thai, and lastly, Miu's grandfather, is seemingly an all-around God who just knows how to be 'an invincible superman.' This is why our hero, Kenichi, is destined to become history's strongest disciple. He has to learn from all of these masters simultaneously, and master virtually every martial art known to man. In the course of his training, he gets himself involved in the underworld of martial arts that his masters are constantly fighting in, and encounters a series of powerful foes, each of whom are masters of other martial arts, like sumo, boxing, etc, and grows by training and fighting in order to defeat all of these powerful foes. The stronger opponents he beats, the more strong foes take notice of him and start desiring to beat him, so the moment he set foot on this path it became an endless journey. But it isn't all bad. He also makes friends via martial arts, and gains the respect of not just Miu, but also a really cute chinese girl martial artist as well. Though his romance with Miu is a little too shy (he's too humble to think he deserves her love yet, since he's still weaker than her), it's definitely there. I think both of them know, somewhere in their hearts, that they love each other, which is just wonderful considering how hard he worked for her to notice him.
It's a great story, and deserves to be in the rankings, but I'm so bitter about the anime stopping while the manga continued that I've never seen fit to rank it before. Here's hoping the anime will eventually get a new tv season, instead of just one or two oav's, and we'll get to enjoy History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi as it always was meant to be enjoyed.
#125: Howl's Moving Castle. Yep, back in the rankings it was shoved out of for being too short. Another feel good Ghibli film, but one of the better ones, so it's always nice to fit it back into the rankings.
#126: RG Veda. Previously this was pushed out of the rankings because it was too short. But with this extra room I can fit it back in again.
#127: Tears to Tiara: When you think of decent fantasy series, that don't involve modernity in any way, but are simply set in the past, incredulously, this is one of the only two series that fit this criteria. 12 Kingdoms, Escaflowne, Dog Days, Inuyasha, every anime involving fantasy always has some time traveler or slider who originally comes from Earth involved. The first series that just wrote as a pure fantasy was Record of Lodoss War. It's one of the most beautiful works of art known to man. The second is Tears to Tiara. Tears to Tiara has a lot of stuff I dislike about it, like a misunderstood Maou (Demon King), and a kind of meandering plot line. However, there are some extremely good scenes in the series too. One example is when a girl is narrating a picture book to some kids of our main character hero's exploits. She just kept repeating the same line over and over again, "Don don taus," which means something like, "and they continued to be victorious," as she flipped each page and showed a new picture of our heroes beating new enemies. This is hilarious, and perfectly describes so VERY MANY bad series that pretend to be more sophisticated than this, but are actually writing at exactly this level, like for instance all the trolloc fighting in A Memory of Light.
Another great scene is when kids are gathering apples from an orchard. And when a small girl turns up wielding an enormous hammer bigger than she is. But the best scene of all is when the bad guys are besieging our hero's castle, and the situation is beginning to look very grim, but everyone is fighting so hard, beyond anything that could be asked of them, in order to somehow survive and emerge victorious. This scene was enough to make me cry, which is always indicative of a genuinely good show. The commanding general of this castle storming force has this enormous sword, so big that when our hero tries to fight it, even when he parries the blow, he's sent flying across whole city streets. How cool is that?
When I look back at how many times fantasy hasn't been done right, and how few times anyone has even tried to do a real fantasy story (Berserk doesn't count because the anime cut out all the supernatural elements and just stuck with the tiny portion of the plot from the manga dealing with human-on-human war), Tears to Tiara is a very welcome addition to the canon. Without it, we'd have a very bare cupboard in a genre that should be overflowing with good ideas. In western literature we have Sword of Truth, Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, A Song of Ice and Fire, any number of classical fantasy literature. In Japan we have Record of Lodoss War -- and Tears to Tiara. That's it. So we may as well celebrate what few series we can.
#128: Trigun: Speaking of series that made me cry, how about Trigun? Did anyone not cry when Vash's best friend, the crazy priest guy, died? The art to this show was pretty terrible, and the premise of Vash the Stampede being this weird alien with a twin alien brother named Knives, who fought each other since childhood about whether it was possible to live without killing or not is pretty out there. Even so, the fight scenes were pretty interesting, and the philosophical neutrality the show respectfully showed between Vash and Knives was really cool. Vash's beliefs led to grief and hardship, not happy harmony. Knives may be cruel, but he isn't stupid. Plus the soundtrack to Trigun was really cool. Besides, who doesn't like the wild west? There aren't enough anime series about the wild west being made. Maybe they could stop doing so many 'Sengoku era except everyone is a girl' series and make another series like Trigun. That would be a plus.
It's rare for a hero to wield a gun instead of magic or a sword, so that's pretty cool too. Basically, this is a very original idea that wasn't executed perfectly, but is still memorable and something any good anime fan should watch. That it brings up the rear of the caravan shows I've still got a lot of great anime to feature left in me. I don't think the quality of Trigun besmirches the rest of my rankings at all. In fact, it just goes to show how much great anime is left out there, that even my weakest link is still as great as Trigun. I encourage everyone to watch all 8 of the series just announced, as well as the top 120 that come before them. They won't regret watching a single one -- all 128 series are amazing experiences. Hopefully these series, which are only provisionally listed here, will enter the official rankings in April when I can make a top 130 list. But maybe they'll fall off and never be mentioned again. If that's the case, it's probably because the spring season just has too many good series and these poor guys can't fit anymore. In that case, it just means anime keeps on getting better, and says nothing negative about the series who could no longer fit. They're still good -- just not good enough.
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