A Look at the 2010’s Part 2: Random Series I Really Liked

I posted part 1 with a lot more focused look at shows last week, but this week is going to be a lot more unfocused and messier in terms of how this list is formed. This is a list that I originally thought about splitting into different kinds of genres, demographics, and categories, but just decided not to. For a couple reasons of course. The first one is laziness which is a huge problem when I try to create a list of anything and don’t want to put any work into it when I try to explain my points of view of shows. I put enough work into what I post already, so I don’t want to spend too much time putting this together.

The second reason is how I think of anime. I do have a top list of shows that I greatly enjoy, but most of my favorite are in a dart board like scenario. Even my favorites list can change from day to day depending on where I am that day or what my mood is. My mind groups together in a dart board scenario where shows I really like are in the center and fill out the rest of the board as their quality depreciates. Whatever show I throw a dart at and hit that day is what my favorite is at that moment. This is the middle of my dart board for the 2010’s.

Same rules as the previous post applies here:

-This is my list, but feel free to suggest who you think fits into this list in the comments.
-This is for fun, not for judging super harshly.
-This list isn’t ranked at all because that’s too hard for me. I don’t even have a top 50 anime list and I am not sure I will ever be able to make one.
-Let’s celebrate the before times.

The List:

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Sound of the Sky

Put this show on a small list of shows that I’ve been wanting to watch for a while now. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from this show after I watched Girls Und Panzer, but the tale of war and tank girls protecting and tale while also sharing the tale of the town in an organic way completely surprised me. This show is beautiful in so many ways and I am not just saying that because of the fact that a character learning to play trumpet isn’t apart of the show’s premise.

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Tsuritama

Fishing boys! Aaaah, loved this show. What do you get when you combine teenage boys slowly figuring out their problems while developing friendships during the process of learning how to fish and then put a tale of space aliens and the one clean up sqaud from Monsters Inc as people into a show? You get Tsuritama and it’s such a glorious and relatable anime to watch. It’s also super relaxing and powerful.

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Girls Und Panzer

This is a show where the title sells itself. Girls driving tanks. What more do I need to say? Oh, there is the fact that this show has a fantastic character journey with a main character coming into her own tank style in a very unique group of girl tankers that fight against other tanks in play form. That may be a thing to say. There is so much to this show that I can’t fit it in here. Read my review!

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Tiger and Bunny

I originally watched this show years ago at an anime club when it first came out. It blew my mind then and it blew my mind during my recent rewatch. Even more so now. Tiger and Bunny is the tale of an aging super hero (though young by normal standards) falling out of touch with the world of super heroism while also getting a partner who is newer and understand how the world works. It’s very powerful and will surprise you with how great it actually is.

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Made in Abyss

The tale of a young girl and her cyborg/robot friend traveling down the depths of hell to find the girl’s mom was something that blew the minds of people when it came out. I was one of them. To this day, I still think about this anime and wonder how Riko and Reg’s journey is going to go. I know that we have that movie, but it hasn’t made it’s way here due to circumstances. Still, the journey itself is full of beautiful settings and wonderfully dangerous monsters. A typ eof anime you don’t see that often.

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Noragami

My oh my. This show about a god struggling to exist in a modern world and try to escape his past is one of the most relatable and emotionally resonant shonen series that I’ve seen in a while. I think a lot about this one a lot too and I am very excited to see what a season three can do to up the anti and emotional power of this show.

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Planet With

What happens when you combine a few seasons or cours of a space opera super robot show into one cour and give a tale of sentimentality and understanding? Then you get Planet With. What always confounds me about this one is how this show works at all let alone be fantastic at what it does. This is one of the most underrated series from the 2010’s and I think everyone should watch it.

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Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju

Rakugo Shinju is one of the most adult and well thought out series from the 2010’s. It’s an anime about characters who do the traditional story telling method called Rakugo while also telling a heart felt drama on the side. I’m honestly astonished that we ever got this show because of how great it is. If you can listen to someone tell a story to you for a length of an episode during the two parter opening, then you can easily watch this show.

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Ushio and Tora

Ushio and Tora is one of my favorite series from 2016. It’s an adaptation of a 90’s shonen manga and cutting out any extraneous bits to make the story flow a bit more naturally. It’s also the tale of the highschool aged son of a priest accidentally letting loose an old tiger demon and finding him a spear to fight demons with. So basically, the telling of how two very unlikely friends met while fighting against the greatest evil this land has ever seen. If you like older shonen stories, then you know what to do.

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Mob Psycho 100

This anime is something else. It’s the story of a powerful psychic kid named Mob who just wants to live a normal life. Yet, he can’t because his “master” Riegen keeping putting him in conflicts where he has to use his powers. That sounds simple, but this show has one of the greatest casts that I’ve seen for a while. Also, the animation and art are immaculate and experimental in a way that works considering the way this story works. Can’t recommend enough.

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91 Days

Oh this one. I couldn’t help but put this one here. 91 Days is a lot of things. It’s a tale of revenge, of gangsters in the 1930’s during prohibition, and about two people from the opposite side o the tracks who become friends and end up having to kill each other because of personal differences. It’s a dramatic tale of so many things. The animation is lackluster, but the story telling and writing are all excellent.

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SSSS.Gridman

This show is probably my favorite thing that came out from Studio Trigger since they came out. It’s pretty hard to describe, but it’s been on an old tokusatsu show from the 90’s. It starts out with a boy at a girl’s house with no memories that just happens to be the superhero Gridman. Then it becomes something larger as he fights more and more Kaiju and we dig into what kind of messed up world this is happening in.

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March Comes In Like A Lion

Out of all those shows out there where I talk about emotions, I don’t think there is a single one as emotionally resonate as this one. March is an anime about a boy named Rei whose gone through a lot of horrible things and the only think keeping him afloat is playing Shogi. This may seem like a sports anime from the outside, but it’s really the story of Rei recovering from trauma and finding himself while playing Shogi.

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A Place Further Than The Universe

Oh my goodness was this one powerful show. On the outside, this is a show about four girls finding away to travel to Antarctica and then getting there. That is the case, but in between all those moments is the tale of those four girls becoming friends and really understanding each other. There is also the emotional tale of finding out where one’s mom passed away and getting past it which is fantastic.

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Bloom Into You

Welp, here we are. One show that helped me explore some things about myself. It looks like a yuri anime on the side, which is technically is too, but it’s a story about one girl finding out what love means or feels like while another girls tries to copy how her older sister lived after she died and try to make the perfect high school experience. Of course, that’s all the tip of the ice berg too. A great anime about emotions and self discovery.

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Dororo

I don’t think I can talk about this anime enough because it’s on Amazon where anime goes to die. This is an updated version of one of Tezuka’s works. A baby was once sacrificed to a god in order for the lord’s lands to live in prosperity. Of course that baby lived and became a force of reckoning who traveled from countryside to countryside fighting monsters to get his body parts back. It’s a tale of morality and whether or not the life of one is worth the lives of everyone else. Also a great throw back series that feels like it came from the early 2000’s.

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Aggretsuko

One day, a red panda graduated from college an got an office job. Years later, she’s still stuck in that job and her dreams of success are stomped on by the daily office life. An office life filled with all sorts of other animals in characterization and just type. A wonderful comedy of death metal and just a character trying to find their way of life.

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Knights of Sidonia

I have not commented on this show a lot, but it’s about time I do. Knights of Sidonia is one of the most unique space opera mecha series that has come out in recent years. A space ship out in the open with humanity living by adapting to space life with one protagonist who is just a normal human who can pilot a robot. Plus there are the monsters out there who want to destroy the Sidonia. So the Sidonia needs to fight off and navigate through all that monster mess. It’s surprisingly well put together despite the cg, but the cg is a boon for mecha vs space monster action.

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Astra Lost in Space

Yet another space epic, but more focused on characters then the adventure itself. In fact, these lost kids traveling planet to planet are meeting their emotional issues as personified by the planets they visit. It’s a tale of kids lost in space finding themselves and breaking out of the shadows of what their parents want them to be by becoming who they want to be and owning that fact. They are all good kids and the journey is spectacular.

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Hunter X Hunter (2011)

Do I really need to describe this one to people? Hunter X Hunter is an anime from one of my favorite creators, Togashi, and it’s such a fantastically layered and thought out experience from what a standard shonen battle anime is. The difference is maturity. Everything that happens in this show happens in a lot of shonen battle anime, but there are a layers added on to make the experience feel a little more full compared to other series. 144 well thought out episodes.

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Humanity Has Declined

A funny and twisted comedy about humanity at the end of their run while the faeries start their take over. Follow along with Mediator as she explores different aspects of human society and the human consciousness through magical and realistic means. It helps that our namely protagonist is really funny and somehow relatable with how she thinks and acts.

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Violet Evergarden

What kind of list would this be if Violet Evergarden didn’t make it in somehow? A bad one for sure. This beautiful tale of a war orphan girl finding what love means while exploring it through other people’s feelings is great. Her being an auto memory doll (or one who writes letters for others) is her license to travel all around the country and getting many other people’s emotional journeys for us in a natural way. Not to mention that the show in general looks fantastic.

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Space Battleship Yamato 2199

A remake that surpasses what one usually sees from remakes. The original Space Battleship Yamato (or Star Blazers) is a great anime with a good story, but the 2199 edition figures out that series’ flaws and fixes them while keeping the core of that story what it is. It makes the story much more sophisticated while also adding a large number of female cast members which just helps make the experience more diverse and interesting.

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Run With The Wind

There isn’t a lot of sports on this list unfortunately, but I feel like I have to add this one. I really liked Run With The Wind. Maybe because it focuses on college age students that find themselves through running, maybe it’s the team work put into this. Why do you run? How do you run? What do you feel about running, and all sorts of things in a more adult lenses is pretty rare for sports anime. I think that is what captured me the most. How unique this sports anime feels with much more mature characters with a more worldly experience.

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Concrete Revolutio

Now to end on one of the most unique shows from the 2010’s, this one. An original series with 1960’s Japanese politics are thrown together with 1960’s manga and anime like designs to create an experience that we don’t see very often. It creates a scenario where anything can happen which adds to the excitement. It sounds chaotic and it is, but somehow the series has an anchor by the one of our main protagonist in this wild world. Check this one out for yourselves because it’s so gorgeous and ridiculous in its own way.

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There it is. Most of the shows from the 2010’s that I wanted to at least talk about and address a little bit. It’s not everything, but I had to cut down this random list a little bit because it was much longer then I thought it would be. On a word document, this is almost 7 pages worth of content. Yeah.

What do you think are some shows that I missed out on or shows you really liked? Leave your opinions in the comments down below. Please don’t yell at my bad opinions too much.

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