I have an interesting relationship with my wife. Although she insists she’s not a particular fan of anime at all, being married to an anime blogger means that she ends up watching a lot of the anime series I watch in order to write the J-List Blog. The usual pattern is that she’ll fall asleep on the sofa, then wake up and start watching whatever I happen to have on, and will get sucked into the story, whether it’s Clannad or AnoHana or whatever.
The other day we got to reminiscing about all the anime we’d watched over the past 20+ years, and I started googling “top anime [year]” to see what the best anime of each year, according to Google’s algorithm. Here’s an incomplete list of the best anime according to Google, which we felt an emotional connection to over the years.
2018, Violet Evergarden. A truly amazing series about a cybernetically enhanced former soldier who takes up a new job typing letters that capture the feelings inside her clients.
2017, Lupin III: The Blood Spray of Goemon Ishikawa. Of all the recent Lupin III offerings, this two-part film, along with 2014’s Daisuke Jigen’s Gravestone, has been the best, working hard to capture the grit and sexualization of the original Monkey Punch style.
2016, A Silent Voice. We decided to watch the film to see what the fuss was about and just sat there, dumb with amazement, after it ended
2013, Gundam Build Fighters. The only Gundam series set in “our” normal world, it’s one of the best shows in the series and features one of the best anime moms ever. Go watch it.
2012, AnoNatsu: Waiting in the Summer. A “sequel” to the beloved Please Teacher and Please Twins, done by the same staff but at a different studio, so they’re not allowed to say “This is priority one!”
2011, AnoHana. My whole family cried at the final reveal at the end of the show. I’m sure you did, too.
2010, Amagami SS. Still the best high school romance anime, with six heroines, each getting their own three-episode route.
2009, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0. An anime about a large earthquake in Tokyo turned out to be prophetic when the 3.11.11 disaster-hit two years later. It was also one of the best-written anime series to come along in a while, with a twist none of us saw coming.
2008, Macross Frontier. Another series my wife watched in its entirety, all the while insisting she wasn’t an anime fan. I loved that the series had so many shout-outs to fans of the original.
2007, Clannad, the instant classic anime that made us all really appreciate electricians. Will there ever been such an emotional roller coaster?
2006, Toradora, which my wife thinks is called Tora! Tora! Tora! I find that adorable and refuse to correct her.
2002, Ai Yori Aoshi. The most perfect harem anime, in my book.
2000, Inuyasha. As a longtime fan of Rumiko Takahashi from the 80s, I was happy to see a work of hers get really popular internationally rather than just be a part of the underground subculture as it had been in the 80s.
1999 Ojamajo Doremi, the popular magical girl anime was part of our Sunday morning regimen, and we all watched it together with our daughter.
1998, Cowboy Bebop, another anime so good, even non-anime fans should watch it.
1997, the original Pokemon series. This series was a big success for J-List, as we found ourselves pretty much the only company on the Internet that was selling properly-licensed Pikachu plushes from Japan, rather than pirated ones from Taiwan.
1996, Martian Successor Nadesico. As this was the founding year of J-List, I was honestly too busy to watch much anime, but I remember making time for this show.
1995, Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was so new and fresh at the time, no one knew what to make of it. If you’ve only seen the remake films, consider watching the original series, which has time to tell a much longer and more complex story.
If you’re a Macross fan, how do you feel about Macross 7? It’s a great entrant in the science fiction and idol culture Macross saga, and yet I never warmed to Basara that much. I much preferred Macross Frontier. pic.twitter.com/MbGCCZqvhs
— Peter Payne (@JListPeter) May 21, 2019
1994, Macross 7. I watched it on broadcast TV on Sunday mornings. It’s a gorgeous series, I have to admit it.
1992, the arrival of Sailor Moon. I was an instant fan of the way the show united the magical girl and sentai fighting team genres to make something boy and girls could appreciate together and taped every episode on the shiny new Super VHS recorder I’d bought.
1991, the year I arrived in Japan. Naturally, I watched City Hunter whenever it was on TV.
1989, Ranma 1/2, another extremely important series in the history of anime boobs, I mean anime. Like the “cousins with benefits” in Sailor Moon, Ranma helped make alternate ideas about gender more mainstream.
1988. Wow, Akira, Grave of the Fireflies and Totoro all happened in 1988? That was quite a year for anime. Akira was the first animated film you could talk about with a member of the opposite sex and still maybe have sex with them later.
1987, Wings of Honneamise, the very first Gainax anime. If there’s an anime as majestic as 2001 A Space Odyssey, it’s this.
1986, Castle in the Sky, Laputa, one of the most perfectly told stories in anime or any other form.
1985, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. You never forget the first Gundam you get into, and for me it was Zeta. I wanna have a pure time! Everyone’s a noble mind!
1984, Fist of the North Star. Although it’s a giant love letter to Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, complete with Sylvester Stallone wearing Mel Gibson’s outfit as he beats up on Dolph Lundgren, it was an extremely awesome show for early anime fans at the time. You wa shock!
1982, Super Dimensional Fortress Macross. Still my favorite anime, fight me. This gif is from 1984 Do You Remember Love? film.
1981, Urusei Yatsura, the groundbreaking anime about a perverted Japanese boy and the alien girl he’s destined to marry. It even got a dub by the BBC.
1979, Lupin III The Castle of Cagliostro. The best Lupin III work ever, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. When the film failed financially, nearly bankrupting the studio, a new business model was created for creating anime, now known as the Anime Production Committee system. The first film made under this system was Nausicaa.
1978, Space Battleship Yamato. The story of a resurrected Japanese battleship that must fly 148,000 light-years to Iscandar and back within one year or all humanity would perish enthralled me. The Yamato 2199 and 2202 remakes are outstanding, too.
1975, A Dog of Flanders. The legendary story of poor Nello and his faithful dog Patrasche, who (spoilers) die and ascend into heaven assisted by cherubs in a scene that’s guaranteed to bring Mrs. J-List to tears every time it’s re-broadcast. Oddly, the story isn’t famous in Belgium because it was published in English and not Dutch.
1974, Heidi Girl of the Alps. Another classic anime from the days when stories were based on Western novels.
1969, Marine Boy, a show I loved as a young boy, about a boy who could swim for hours underwater if he chewed “oxygum” every two hours. I learned that Mrs. J-List had also watched the show as a child, which is kind of crazy considering we come from opposite ends of the planet. 1969 was also the year of the original Dororo, which got an outstanding remake 50 years later.
1967, Speed Racer, or Mach Go Go Go in Japanese. I was thrilled to watch this as a boy, and the final episode where Speed learns the identity of Racer X (“Mister X” in the Japanese version) gave me my first anime-induced dopamine high.
1966, Sally the Witch. The first magical girl anime, which Mrs. J-List loved watching in re-runs, was directly inspired by the popularity of Bewitched here in Japan. Just look at how groovy people were back then!
Did you enjoy exploring the best anime of each year, according to Google and Mrs. J-List? Did we miss any “best” shows we should have included? Let us know on Twitter!
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