One would think that being laid up for most of the year I would have been an anime watching fiend, and I was for the spring season (which aired right after my surgery, so I had plenty of time), but after that my interest waned, and overall this has been a year where I tried a lot of series and just didn't finish them.
Also two series that I enjoyed I'm not putting on the list because they didn't finish so I don't know what my final impression of them will be, but assuming they don't faceplant the ending, Attack on Titan and 86 may be here next year.
The series below are the seven I liked enough to finish, presented in the order I watched them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
Wakakozake
I don't normally get into bite-sized anime that only lasts a few minutes per episode, but Wakakozake was so easy to slip into. Literally the only thing that happens each episode is that Wakako tries something different to eat and drinks a little alcohol, but there's something attractive about a single woman willing to eat by herself and just soak up the taste of her dinner.
Vivy -Fluorite's Eye Song- *
If there is one anime I loved more than anything else I saw this year, it's Vivy -Fluorite's Eye Song-. It tells the story of the world's first sentient android who has been tasked by a time traveling robot to stop the robot apocalypse happening in the distant future, but the catch is that the driving mission in her life is to make people happy with her music. She's not built for espionage. The only way she can justify even embarking on this scenario is to stretch her reasoning to accommodate the fact that the robot apocalypse would prevent her from making people happy with music. Throughout the series Vivy grows and learns to become more than just her programming while never deviating from what she was created to do. The ending stumbles a little bit, but this is still head and shoulders over anything else I watched and the kind of series I'd recommend even to non-anime fans.
So I'm a Spider, So What?
Class outcast Wakaba is reborn as a spider monster in another world that behaves suspiciously like an MMORPG. This show is a bit uneven with Wakaba (also called Kumoko, literally "Spider Child") stealing the show as she nerds her way to survival in a dog-eat-dog realm of monsters. She's a ton of fun to watch, but her classmates who are also reborn, as humans for the most part, unfortunately feel very generic to anyone who's ever watched any sort of medieval fantasy media. The show suffered production issues towards the end, making for a bumpy conclusion, especially since the novel series hasn't ended yet.
The Saint's Magical Power is Omnipotent *
I'll probably pick up the books for this one. Office lady Sei is summoned to another world, which is a popular anime trope these days, but a high school girl arrives along with her, and the prince who summoned the titular saint from another world immediately dubs the younger girl the saint, leaving poor Sei to deal with being transplanted to another reality and not being the special summoned person. Though understandably upset, Sei is an older protagonist, so she doesn't spend much time sulking before carving a new life in this world. I really like it for having an adult protagonist and the slow burn romance between Sei and Albert is cute.
Moriarty the Patriot
Alternate telling of James Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories, where there are three brothers, Albert, William, and Louis, who together form the Lord of Crime. I loved the first half of the show, which shows how William and Louis came from poverty and were adopted into Albert's family, which gave them the legitimacy they need to complete their plan to revolutionize the class system in Victorian London. We see how the Moriarty brothers step up to help people the system won't, even though it often involves breaking the law. Unfortunately the second half stumbles and the final plan of William James Moriarty, the mastermind of the trio, feels poorly thought out.
Shadows House *
In a vast manor live the shadowy progeny of Shadows House and their attendant dolls. The shadows and their dolls look identical save that the shadows are completely black with no face. Their dolls serve as faces for them, providing the expressive context that might otherwise be missing when they wish to communicate. Ideally shadow and doll are in complete sync with each other, but Emilico is a free-spirited doll and Kate does not wish to mold her into a lifeless servant. Being based on an ongoing manga, the season concludes after a story arc rather than a series ending, but I quite liked the mystery and the shadow/doll interactions.
Backflip!!
I did not know men's rhythmic gymnastics was a thing until I stumbled across this show. It's a sleeper, but if you think you're even vaguely interested in a show about male gymnasts, it's worth a shot. It's funny, the gymnastics are extremely well animated, and the cast is highly likable.
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