Staff Picks: The Best Anime of 2024
Fantasy cooking, singing robots, and the return of some of our favorites from years past
Welcome to the second post in our annual Staff Picks series, and the final one available for free on the main Ani-Gamers blog! Check out our first post about our favorite video games of 2024 here. Our final Staff Picks post will cover “Everything Else” (anything that’s not anime OR games) and will be out tomorrow for $5+ patrons.
As we uneasily settle into a world of increasing media consolidation in anime, including Sony owning Crunchyroll (and a recent 10% stake in Kadokawa), we can at least take solace in the fact that 2024 gave us a ton of great shows. Lovingly rendered adaptations of some of our favorite manga, a new Monogatari series for our resident Nisio Isin freaks, and a show about banging your best friend who is also a robot.
Enjoy our picks, and let us know your favorite anime of the year in the comments, via our Discord, or on social media!
Inaki
#3: Oshi no Ko
Beloved kami anime Oshi no Ko returns for another arc of perfect melodrama, as its characters are once again put through exquisite suffering in pursuit of their art. Oshi no Ko is the modern synechdoche for classics such as Glass Mask or Dear Brother, with its heightened dramatic tension emphasizing the gravity of the characters’ situation. Where Oshi no Ko sets itself apart from those classics is its surprising sense of realism, its ripped-from-the-headlines narrative elements managing to keep its finger perfectly on the pulse of where we are as a culture. That’s no mean feat especially as a manga that is then adapted into an anime, which takes a lot of time.
I love media that’s about our relationship to culture, and how our perception and the media we like shapes our experience of reality. Especially in this new season, Oshi no Ko perfectly captures the tension between art and commerce; the desire to commit yourself wholly to art while encumbered by the real needs of the other people involved; the clash of their personalities and approaches to what is, at the end of the day, a job. And of course the adaptation is sumptuous, doing justice to the original manga’s deep love of Japanese popular culture and the sticky line between your real self and your art.
It’s a delicate art to make something uncomfortably close to reality, but also heightened, melodramatic, larger-than-life (insert Simpsons reference here). It’s breathtaking that Oshi no Ko can have its cake and eat it too in that regard, not limited by an arbitrary binary between dramatic and grounded.
#2: Train to the End of the World
Train to the End of the World is the kind of high-concept aesthetics showcase you can only ever get from anime, a kinetic, fast-paced sensory overload of images and ideas as four young women traverse a world gone completely crazy after being destroyed by the relentless, meaningless march of empty consumerism. There’s a lot of media these days that’s about finding reasons to carry on after an apocalypse has taken everything away from you, can’t think why that might be (see also my game picks), and Train to the End of the World is in that tradition. It’s on the comfier side of post-apocalypse media, more in the tradition of Humanity Has Declined and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou than Hokuto no Ken.
At its heart Train to the End of the World is one of the oldest, most important stories human beings have: the strange journey through strange lands, that shakes our party and leaves them changed on the other side of it. The transformation of the familiar, the main character’s local train line, into a twisted and colorful nightmare of bizarre dangers as they try to find their lost companion, and make some kind of sense of what exactly happened to destroy the old world.
And I really can’t overstate how drop-dead gorgeous this show is, a real triumph of TV anime as a format. Not just the remarkable visuals but the rapid-fire pacing, nothing but forward motion along with the characters as they get swept up into their journey. One of the most underrated shows of 2024 and destined to be a beloved cult classic.
#1: Monogatari: Off and Monster Season
Nisio Isin’s Monogatari series, and its TV anime adaptation Bakemonogatari, is, with absolutely no hyperbole, the single most consequential piece of media of my entire life. It well and truly set me on the path I’m on now, turned me from a baby anime fan into an otaku, influenced my life decisions and amped up my desire to read Japanese texts in their original language, my aesthetic sensibilities, whom I made friends with. Having this show back and better than ever is the thing I needed in my life, and it remains a joy to watch. Isin has “ended” Monogatari several times over, only to come back to it with new ideas and new directions for its cast. Its central idea, in which a mental wound can become infected and fester like a physical one in the form of incursions from the spirit world, is as fascinating as ever, elevated by an aesthetic that’s the match of its grand narrative ambitions and love of pure narrative.
Evan Minto
#3: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
Everybody’s favorite elf girl isn’t just a great character design! Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is the kind of slow-paced and thoughtful fantasy I wish we saw more of in a medium so awash with fantasy stories. The first half of this season, which aired in 2023, followed the title character on a lackadaisical journey through a mostly peaceful fantasy world, with each vignette conveying a wistful lesson on the impermanence of life. The second half leans more into standard shonen battle manga tropes (a mage exam!), to its detriment, but it maintains a lot of what makes the series so great, including its excellent characterization, even for side characters. But what remains my favorite thing about Frieren is the balance that director Keiichirō Saitō (Bocchi the Rock) strikes between a conspicuously subtle, restrained character acting style and the stunning, expressive animation on display in every action sequence.
#2: Delicious in Dungeon
Alright maybe I’m overdoing it with the elf girls this year. Delicious in Dungeon is one of my favorite manga series of the past 10 years or so, and this year it got a wonderful adaptation from my favorite anime studio, Trigger. With veterans of Little Witch Academia, Gridman, and Cyberpunk Edgerunners on board, this is a far cry from the frenetic work of Hiroyuki Imaishi & co., and better for it. Like the original manga, this story of starving dungeon crawlers eating the monsters they kill strikes a perfect balance of coziness and ambitious fantasy world-building, with one of the most memorable ensemble casts in anime. Ryoko Kui’s adorable designs come to life with expressive and often hilarious animation, and in action scenes the team never misses a chance to show off a new magical effect or lavish piece of creature animation.
#1: Look Back
The one-shot manga Look Back from superstar author Tatsuki Fujimoto (Chainsaw Man) is a heartbreaking and inspiring story of artists forging a rivalry-turned-friendship and how it influences their work. This anime version, a mere 58 minutes long, captures everything that’s great about the manga, while adding to it the delicate, thoughtful direction of Kiyotaka Oshiyama and naturalistic character animation from both the director himself and his team at Studio Durian. Like all of Fujimoto’s work, Look Back is both hilarious and philosophically rich, and when I watched the movie in the theater, that mix of simple comedy and complex grief resulted in everybody in the theater walking out with tears in their eyes. This is one of the all-time greats, folks.
Patrick Sutton
#3: Sound! Euphonium 3
Sound! Euphonium has long been one of my favorites from Kyoto Animation. I’m thankful that they gave Kumiko and her friends’ third year a full season to breathe after her second year was relegated to a movie. It really helped make it much more impactful. I’ve really loved this series and getting to watch these characters grow over the course of their high school life. It felt like real growth with real challenges in a way I don’t think we see enough of in anime, and I can’t recommend it more.
#2: Kinnikuman Perfect Origin Arc
The Justice, Devil, and Perfect Chojin have signed a peace treaty to prevent future wars between their factions. Everyone is at peace and Kinnikuman has returned to Planet Kinniku as king. But then a mystery group from space, The Perfect Large Numbers, show up and declare war! Whether any of that makes sense to you or not doesn’t really matter, it’s awesome. You might be worried that you won’t be up to speed on Kinnikuman lore but don’t worry about that either, the first episode is just 20 minutes of the main characters going “remember that time” back and forth to each other as they recap the entire series. There’s a guy who’s a cassette tape player and gains powers by switching out the tapes in his body. Seriously, it owns.
#1: Brave Bang Bravern!
Burn, burn, bang, burn, burn, bang, bang, bang, Bravern! Masami Obari is back with a new original mecha show! Bravern is an absolutely wild ride and one of those shows where I don’t want to spoil anything because every twist and turn really makes the experience. Lewis Smith and Isami Ao are two mech pilots that meet during joint American-Japanese military exercises in Hawaii but then aliens attack! And then a super robot named Bravern shows up and demands that Isami gets inside him to help him fight the aliens, and yes it’s as homoerotic as that sounds. It’s a wonderful ride and something I can’t recommend more regardless of how much you’re into mecha anime. Bravern sings the opening theme. Not the actor. The robot. Check the credits.