2012 was the year of tankery.
Not the first series to notice that geeks liked cute girls and geeks like military stuff, so why not combine the two, but one of the more succesful. One season, several OVAs, a movie sequel, another movie sequel, in six parts and the revival of the local economy of the town in which it was set thanks to geek tourism. The idea of tanks battles being a typical female sport, a pastime to make young girls “loveable like the clatter of iron tracks is hilarious and the series took it all serious enough. Making warfare look all cute and moe isn’t necessarily the most progressive thing to do, but the series was great fun and the battles were awesome. At heart, this was basically a high school sports series, just with tanks. You got the setup, the assembly of teams, the challenges to get to the final, the inevitable training and powering up sequences to take on increasingly stronger enemies and a ragtag bunch of underdogs taking on the elites of the tankery world and winning despite the odds.
Another was another type of anime altogether. Supposed to be an atmospheric, terrifying horror series, it’s instead most remembered for its incredible camp, over the top death scenes like the one above. Who the hell sharpens their umbrella this much? Naff as it was, I did like it though. Horror being rare in anime, beggars cannot be choosers. The only other series that even touched horror were the comedy zombie romp Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? in its second season and the also zombie based romcom Sankarea. You might also count the survival death game Btooom while High School of the Death got an OVA, but that was it.
Moving from horror to comedy, this was in much better shape this year. Kill Me Baby stoner humour may not have been to everybody’s tastes, but surely nobody disliked the the ending theme with its strange dance. Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou/the Daily Lives of High School Boys was somewhat similar to last year’s Nichijou, consisting of a mix of slapstick and character based humour, each episode have multiple sketches and a largish cast to act them out. Also like Nichijou, it’s one of the best comedies of the decade. A much more niche sort comedy was provided by Joshiraku, with a quartet of four rakugo storytellers talking to each other, the voice over each episode reminding the viewer that even if the dialogue is uninteresting, at least the girls were cute. Even more niche: Teekyuu a short, rapid fire tennis based comedy that has gotten seven or eight sequels since. You need more knowledge of Japanese than I have to get the most of it though.
On the romance side of things, I liked Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun enough to also finish the original manga, but you have to be able to move past the very early scene in which the male lead threatens to rape the female protagonist. In general the story revolves around a stoic 16 year old girl only interested in getting a good job and career and therefore rejecting anything that threatens her studying. the male lead on the other hand is a wild child who in the end only she can tame. What makes the series is the humour and the characters, as well as the supporting cast. Sukitte Li Na Yo meanwhile revolved around a shy girl without friends who catches the attention of her school’s prince and slowly comes out of her shell as a result. Their relationship is established relatively quickly, rather than keeping the will they won’t they pattern of most romance series.
If you’re more in the mood fo a harem series, Oniichan dakedo Ai Sae Areba Kankeinai yo ne! was fairly typical but with the added zest of incest. Something also present, but much less so in To Love-Ru: Darkness, based on one of the most succesful ecchi manga romances of the 21st century. Fun with various alien princesses and their love for an unremarkable high school boy. The protagonist of Seitokai no Ichizon Lv. 2 might want it to be a harem series, but his harem mates refused. High School DxD was a pervy harem show, with the protagonist literally sell his soul to be surrounded by a bevy of demonic beauties. Completely basic, but popular enough to get several sequels over the course of the decade.
Of course the most important series of 2012 was a series whose succes would reshape anime for the next decade thanks to its setting, characters and well done wishfulfilment, a series based on Kawahara Reki’s already popular light novels. I’m talking of course about Accel World. Kidding. Sword Art Online, for all its flaws, for all that everybody got sick of it, was and is hugely influential, kicking off the whole Trapped in Fantasyland/Isekai genre. Whether videogameland or a more traditional but still RPG based fantasyland, the idea that your innate nerd ability to play games would make you king in another world was seductive to say the least. Personally, I’d argue that had the first SAO series stopped with Kirito coming out of his coma, it would’ve been a great series, but the second half of that first series undid most of the good it did. Nevertheless I’ve kept watching each new SAO series as they’ve come out. Best way to watch it is still the abridged series though.
It was a good year for idols. Yesterday I completely forgot to mention that Pretty Rhythm, which would evolve into the Pripara series, debuted in 2011, while this year saw the debut of its main rival, Aikatsu. Both are based on a range of arcade collectable card games and both are arguably the modern equivalents of the traditional Mahou Shoujo series: aimed at preteen and teen girls, featuring transformations, pretty dresses and everyday problems resolved through some form of magic, be it singing or otherwise. And whereas magical girl shows had the monster of the week as the highlight of each episode, the magical idol show has the performance of the week. When I got back into anime some five years ago I’d never suspect that I would be watching this sort of kid show, shows that aren’t even picked up by any of the streaming services here, but still fansubbed the old fashioned way. But I love them. They have heart, a surprising amount of depth and cute characters. On the more adult side, there was the biggest idol group in the world getting its own anime: AKB48 became AKB0048, underground freedom fighters in a Galaxy that had forbidden any kind of entertainment and especially idols. A pretty out there idea that was handled very well creating a series that worked well both as an idol series and a sort of space opera.
Good series not yet mentioned include two KyoAni series: Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!, a lovely and hilarious romance between an embarassed ex-nerd and the girl who still believes in his dark history. That was almost as good as anime could get, but the more serious Hyouka has a shot at being the anime of the decade. So has Kyousougiga, a strange little story about three kids stuck in a mirror city. There were also two Monogatari series: Nisemonogatari and Nekomonogatari, combining somewhat pretensious philosophy with being horny on main. Nazo no Kanojo X managed to go even further with the latter, taking horny and perverting it into something unique if slightly nauseating if you’re sensitive to its kinks.
Statistically: I’ve gotten 164 shows in my library this year, showing that anime production was still increasing, having watched 90 of them, all of them after they aired. We’re sort of getting an idea of what modern anime is starting to look like this year, what with the debut of SAO, but also the establishment of the great Aikatsu/PriPara rivalry. There are more slice of moe series and fewer old fashioned harem shows as well.
This is day four of Twelve Days of Anime 2019. Tomorrow: 2013, the year I started noticing anime again.
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