My top 200 anime had a little problem in that Summer Pockets has not been officially green-lit to receive an anime, so one of my top anime didn't actually exist. That problem has been solved by the good folks over at WB-Japan and Netflix. Bastard! is returning, this time not as a short oav, but a real full length anime. Bastard! was in my top anime rankings for many years before I grew tired of short series taking up slots that should go to real shows, but now it can come back through the front door, legitimately, as a long series like everybody else. The source work was always great so if it ever got a proper adaption this would naturally happen.
I just never thought, after all this time, Bastard! would ever get a real adaption. It's thirty years old after all. Actually the manga started in 1988 so 35 years old. . . I guess miracles do happen.
I rewatched Goblin Slayer in the hopes that it could be #200 but it just wasn't up to par. There were no deeply emotional moments or uniquely charming aspects to the series. It felt strictly inferior to Hai to Gensou no Grimgar, which also spends a lot of time fighting goblins. In addition, the vomiting sound effect, naming sense, and lack of nipples on breasts are all annoying and bring the story down. (The manga has no such censorship) So Bastard! appearing out of the blue really saves my bacon. Now I have a genuine series I can slot in at #200. A series that does show nipples, or at least it had better, because that's what the manga does regularly, as did the original oav series.
Bastard! is better than the non-existent Summer Pockets because it's going to start airing this year, not some unknown future year. It's better than Goblin Slayer because it actually has emotional moments (I cried when Dark Schneider and Arshes, his dark elf lover, were facing off in a clash of ultimate magiks. It was such a tragedy for them to be so similar and yet so far apart from one another.) It has memorable characters. It has great character designs. It has cool and interesting fights. It has sexy girls. It has humor. It has everything. Bastard! is amazing. The one thing it ever lacked was length, and now it's got that too.
I hope they show Dark channeling Gabriel's magic to take down Uriel. Why not cover the later chapters the oav's never reached? The new season has so much source material to work with! But I also hope the anime goes further than that and fills in the holes the manga left open. There are two holes, basically. How Dark and Gabriel got together to escape hell, and how Dark and Gabriel defeated the remaining angels of God who are intent on humanity's destruction. The manga-ka gave up at this point, I guess because he was bored or lazy, or perhaps because he couldn't think up a good solution to the problems he himself created for his poor protagonist. But in any event, the manga is not satisfying. The anime now has a chance to surpass the manga and provide us all with the ending it never had. Anything the anime does becomes canon because there's no source work contradicting it. Any answer is more satisfying than none.
Bastard! will remain in my great movies hall of fame until the new full length series comes out and covers the same material as the oav's. If it doesn't cover all the material from the original anime then I guess the oav's can exist as a separate good movie forever. A lot remains to be learned about this coming anime. Whether it's going to be censored or not, whether it will be true to the source or not, how long it will be, how many arcs it will cover, we basically know nothing right now. For a show with so many possibilities of still going wrong, #200 is the only suitable ranking. But this series has enough potential, if done right, to be in the top 100.
Once Bastard!, Ken Tensei and Eminence in Shadow start airing my top 200 anime rankings will be full of full length great anime all the way to the brim, all the way to 200, for the first time ever. It will be the perfect hall of fame I've been waiting for all my life. 2022 just keeps getting better.
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