zushi's place

As I mentioned in an older post, I realized sometime this year that I require a minimum amount of narrative consumption to sleep well. This is something that no one else I know of deal with, but ended up being a net positive and a pretty large part of my life.

So I've watched a lot of animations this year. I've dabbled in watching more live-action shows (The Office, The Sopranos, The Queen's Gambit, various stand-up comedians) and feel like these are finally catching a bit of traction, but my main diet is still animation. Ended up finishing 12 series, 10 feature length animations, and have about 5 series ongoing so far. Here are the standouts of the year for me:

From the New World – a combination of sci-fi and fantasy with traditional Japanese elements and really thorough worldbuilding. This is a 26-episode anime series adapted from a book by a well-known mystery writer. From the New World details a civilization built from the ground up after an unexpected discovery in humans, and it observes this civilization from the perspective of six kids whose innocent childhood gradually gives way to a depressing understanding of human nature. What strikes me about this show beyond the worldbuilding is that it's a tragedy in the purest sense of the word – a tragedy on the scale of (multiple) individuals, societies, and even the entire human civilization. The strong worldbuilding means that there's a lot to think about specifically on the failures of societies and civilization here.

The directing of a few episodes were a bit strange, but for me it's more than made up by the aesthetic qualities of the plot and the sheer amount of things to think about from it. 10/10

Girl's Last Tour – technically I'm one episode away from finishing this series, but I've been a huge fan of what I've seen so far.

Girl's Last Tour details two girls' travels through a post-war world with apparently few people remaining. The Girls have little knowledge of things we've taken for granted nowadays like music and religion, and so their conversations and discoveries throughout the show becomes a sort of philosophical investigation of modern life.

For what seems like a depressing setting, the show also does really well to keep it light. In fact, I would consider the overall mood of the show to be “comfy and relaxing”. It has the effect of having an effortless yet deep conversation with a close friend, interspersed with moments of humor and beauty. For me it's a 10/10.

I think retro nostalgia is back in a big way in 2020, and I guess my way of partaking in this has been watching Card Captor Sakura (1998) with friends on Discord. We had thought the show would probably be really boring since it's intended for audiences as young as elementary schoolers, but it ended up being surprisingly good at mixing a nice and sunny atmosphere with a variety of smart and funny unusual situations. It ended up being the perfect show for dealing with 2020. 9/10.

Lastly, Flip Flappers was really extreme in both its strength and flaws. It's one of the most creative, energetic, and visually appealing works I've seen, but got bogged down by loads of fanservice (wiki page) and a super-rushed ending, therefore, this is a show I wouldn't recommend to anyone unless I know that they really are not bothered by fanservice and am looking for something really out there. Neverthreless, I really appreciated it's surprisingly mature take on depression, and the show's appeal to a sense of adventure stayed with me a long time after it's over. For me this is among the most memorable show I've seen this year, but I would only give an 8/10.

On the other end of the spectrum, I've also seen some spectacularly bad animation this year that made me question faith in humanity. I may write about this in the future, but won't be disclosing the name for now.

That's it for this year! There are a ton of other good animations that didn't make the list, but I'd be happy to recommend shows in comments/conversations/DMs. Here's to encountering some really good animations next year.

— Categorized under: #animations