2017 was not the best of years. Not the worst of years either, but it was a year that could be accurately described in about 2 seconds: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
For anime, however, 2017 was a fairly unique kind of year. There weren’t many big must-see shows that usually get mentioned in these sorts of lists, but I can’t say that the year was horrible. For me, 2017 was a year where we got a lot of really good niche shows, not many big blockbusters. A lot of smaller, sometimes more wholesome, shows to keep my passion for anime alive while the rest of the world felt like it was crumpling all around.
So today, I wanted to take the time as I usually do, to highlight some of the shows that I thought were the most unique. Maybe not the best, definitely not the worst, but the ones that to me had the most impact out of everything that I’ve watched from last year.
For those who care about how this list was created, here were my four guidelines:
- I have to have seen the show to put it on this list, so if I missed something, that’s potentially why.
- The show must have started in the 2017 calendar year. It doesn’t have to be over by 2018, but it must have started its run in 2017.
- With exception to my Best of Year, none of these are in ranked order. This allows me to not have to decide which of any of these are better than the others, with the exception of my favourite.
- This is my list. You don’t have to agree with it and if you don’t like it, feel free to make your own. But it is mine, so yeah.
And with that out of the way, ladies, gentlemen and others, my name is Arkada and today on Glass Reflection are my Top 10 Anime from 2017. Let’s jam.
The Honourable Mentions for this list are quite simple. All the good sequels. While I could have each of these as its own entry on the main list, a recommendation for a second season is really just a recommendation for the first if you’ve never seen it before. So while these sequels are good in their own right, really this is me just telling you to go watch the whole freaking series. So here we go:
Some of these shows I’ve either relayed my thoughts before or have thoughts upcoming, but all of them are worthy successors to their respective shows and if you haven’t checked out any of these at all, now would be a good time to start. But now, let’s get on to the list proper.
#1 – Girls’ Last Tour
Starting off the list is Girls’ Last Tour. This is a show that I would refer to as my “whiskey anime” for the year. Usually every year or so, there comes a series that I use to just kind of chill and relax with. One that doesn’t ask for much and tells a somewhat calming tale for me to enjoy, possibly with a glass of whiskey. This one fits the bill, even more so than say Rakugo Shinjuu for me, which is odd. I find a lot of Slice of Life to be a bit too upbeat for what I want out of a whiskey anime. This, however, is not really upbeat. Not really downbeat either. It ended up being this calm middle ground for most of its run that I didn’t really get much of from other shows this year. While others of this kind that I’ve enjoyed before either focused on some kind of mythological storytelling, unique histories, or a fascinating journey, Girls’ Last Tour is a much more practical tale focusing on survival in a wasteland, but not in the more desperate sense that you normally see. The thing that made it hard to recommend for most of the year (besides the Moe-blob aspect that some can’t stand) is that for the longest time it was only available on Anime Strike, which just recently bit the dust. It now only requires a Prime membership. Still not great, but not as bad as it used to be. Though if you have both the time and the ability to watch it, and you’re in the mood for something a little bit more chill, it should do you just fine.
#2 – Saga of Tanya the Evil
Now, the other side of the Moe spectrum. Instead of having two Moe-blobs trying to survive in a wasteland, you have one that seems to be trying her hardest to create one. Tanya was a series that I pegged pretty early on for this list. Its setting is a country in the middle of a world war-like scenario, and it plops our main character right into the middle of it. It gives her the tools to be one of the most powerful soldiers that the world had ever seen, but she would much rather try to defy fate and do her damnedest just to get a cushy position on the sidelines. But fate, and this show’s version of God, does not let her, constantly plunging her deeper and deeper into the fray just to see if she can handle it – to see if she will give up and admit in the existence of God and a greater power, but she’s too stubborn for that. It’s a show that I kept up with for the explosions and for the action, but also just to see how far the main character Tanya would eventually go to get her way, how stubborn she would become, and what God would eventually throw at her to get her to change her mind. In the end, it didn’t complete the way I would have liked, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the more enjoyable watches I’ve had this year.
#3 – The Ancient Magus’ Bride
The Ancient Magus’ Bride is a series that hit home a bit harder than I’d like to admit. What I first thought would be a fantastical western fantasy with a red-haired eastern protagonist turned into a much more personal take at one’s outlook on life. It stars a young woman who, at the very beginning, was a character that was more or less just waiting to die. At the start, Chise is still young. She doesn’t have any semblance of a grasp of what she’s capable of, and she’s at a point mentally where she just doesn’t care, despite not really being alive long enough to find a purpose. We received the majority of the show’s OVA series throughout the year, leading to its rather brilliant 12 episode season in the fall. Granted, its story is still not over yet and we’ll be seeing another full cour in 2018. But what we have gotten so far, I have to say, has become one of the highlights of my week for the past several months. The change in Chise’s character from her desperate beginnings to her fiery finale at the end of 2017’s last episode made for what I think to be one of the best character arcs from any show this past year. And the whole show, just all of Ancient Magus’ Bride is just….well, beautiful.
#4 – Re:Creators
What if, instead of sending our relatable nerd protagonist to a fantasy world like we have seen happen far too often in recent times, we instead bring the fantasy to him. That is the basis of Re:Creators, a series where beloved characters of this fictional Tokyo pop culture lexicon find themselves in the “real world”. Re:Creators is an interesting twist on the typical Isekai storyline, while at the same time being a quirky parody of all the various genres that have influenced pop culture over the years, from Mahou Shoujou, to Mecha, to the stereotypical swords and sorcery. It focuses much on the power of social perspectives, as well as what I feel to be aptly handling many of the cliché tropes combined with a more realistic universe. It’s not a perfect series though, and at times I felt that it tried to circumvent its own mediocrity by calling attention to it, which didn’t work all that well. But in terms of entertainment, and in terms of a unique take on a genre that honestly I have had my absolute fill of up to this point, it was certainly a success to watch and worthwhile in that regard.
#5 – Euromanga Sensei
“Oh Ark, you can’t like Euromanga Sensei. It’s a terrible show! It’s nothing but a cheap rip-off of Oreimo with a “plot” that consists of nothing but narrative coincidences. And it doesn’t even rate a 7 on MAL and we all know that 7 is average in the messed up world of numbers that we live in. So in summary, this should not be here and you are idiotic for even considering it.”
Well, first of all, fuck you. You can’t really call this series a rip-off of Oreimo because they were both written by the same guy, difference being that this time around they actually made the characters entertaining. And narrative coincidences? No, go watch MMO Junkie if you want some of those. Plus, who the hell cares about MAL scores anyway? That’s a horrible metric for you to be basing your choices on, man. Euromanga Sensei is on this list not because it is good. It is here because it is entertaining. It’s a bare-bones and cliché lewd rom-com that does exactly what it set out to do for the exact audience that it set out to impress, and in that regard it does its job extremely well. For some people, this series is a modern masterpiece of anime, the pinnacle of a genre that’s far too often under-represented. For others, it is a flaming train wreck that should never have been made and I fully expect to be blocked, banned, and reported for even daring to suggest to these people that it is a highlight of the year for me. But it totally was. If you want a cute rom-com and aren’t turned off by the idea that the main couple are two non-blood-related siblings, then go forth! Otherwise? Grab your pitchforks and get in line.
#6 – The King’s Avatar
This entry might be a bit…controversial. This is because – by most people’s definition – The King’s Avatar isn’t even an anime. While still Asian in origin, The King’s Avatar is a Chinese production, focusing on the exploits of one professional gamer working his way through the rankings in a popular MMO title. It’s a story that has many of the same elements that make Isekai shows popular, while not really belonging to that genre. The game that the characters play is not VR, and the game itself isn’t even our setting, it’s just a set piece to show how serious people can get about competitive e-sports. And that tale was extremely compelling for me. Mechanically, I can’t say that the animation is the best thing here, and listening to Mandarin instead of Japanese can take a bit of getting used to, but personally I’ve been all for other countries and viewpoints on the same sort of style and themes that have made anime the unique thing that it is. No country on Earth should have any semblance of a monopoly on good animated storytelling, and this is a prime example of that. It may not be what people traditionally consider to be an anime, but it was entertaining for me for the exact same reasons that I find animation from Japan to be entertaining. It’s just its style, even if it didn’t have the extra polish.
#7 – Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid
Make way for the inevitable mention of the small dragon. This one should come as no surprise, since in my review of the series I called it, “The best comedy Kyoto Ani has released since Nichijou,” and even now I stand by that statement. For me, Kobayashi was more than just a Slice of Life comedy with dragons. It was a brilliant example of an atypical family in anime, while showing just as much or more heart than you would expect from a show about family. None of the characters are related by blood, but the relationships that they form over the course of this short comedy series are stronger than most. If you want to know more about the series, go and check out my full review because I’d rather not repeat my gushing praise for it any more than I have to. Koybayashi is my Comedy of the Year, and if that’s not enough to entice you to go watch it, then I have done all I can.
#8 – Kemono Friends
Annnnnd hopefully the last controversial pick of this list, Kemono Friends is a show that you either love or hate, and there’s not too much of a middle ground there. It’s a series that was quite quickly laughed at and forgotten about by many a person after the initial episodes due to its…let’s say shoddy animation, and that’s being extremely generous. That said, Kemono Friends has a heavy amount of heart to it, enough to completely outstrip the production quality that surrounds it. Behind its lighthearted exterior was this continual dark backstory that kept me interested throughout its entirety. It is definitely an acquired taste kind of show, but it you haven’t tried it out yet, just give it a few episodes and see if it sucks you in. You might be surprised.
#9 – Land of the Lustrous
I haven’t talked much about Land of the Lustrous since its airing, and all I’ve said on it basically was just in my anticipated video for the season where I hoped, nay prayed, for it to finally give us an example of a CGI animated show worth talking about. But because of those expectations, I never really got around to watching it past its first few episodes until I was preparing this list. But my god, let me say that if this came out in the last couple of years, I think it would have been contender for Best of Year for all of those years, on top of this year, without much trouble. And not just because it has the best-looking OP of the year either. I mentioned how Chise from Magus’ Bride was one brilliant example from this year of a beautiful character arc, but the story of Phos from Lustrous is just as noteworthy. The show itself takes a bit of time to rev up, to be fair. It’s not a traditional setting. Like, anthropomorphic gems fighting some kind of specter-like gods? Yeah, you need to give it time to explain the circumstances that the characters find themselves in and who they are. But starting around episode 4, until pretty much the end of the series, is a ride that I felt to be one of the most downright enjoyable in the entire year. The downside to it of course is that its story is not yet complete, and its first season finale really did feel like a bad cliffhanger in some lingering plot threads, but I cannot deny that the story of the show up until that point was a joy to watch. But of course, I have saved my favorite for last.
#10 – Made in Abyss
Made in Abyss is the come-out-of-nowhere “Feels show” that wrecked me so hard this year. And I am being completely serious when I say that if you haven’t watched it, I beg you, I plead with you to please stop reading this right now and go do that. I don’t even care if you come back afterwards, just go and watch it. And really, that’s kind of a weird thing for me to say because I don’t think I’ll ever want to watch it again. It’s in my heart alongside other very dark “Feels shows” like Grave of the Fireflies. Anime like this are amazing and brilliant, but also so sad and terrible that really I don’t know if you could pay me to watch it again, but I cannot stress enough that you need to see it once. I don’t want to spoil much about it because, hell, even talking about it the way I currently am with this much enthusiasm might be a bit too much. The production quality of the show is grand, the soundtrack features music that is some of the best of this year, and its story is far more emotional and engrossing than I ever expected, and I love it. But its story is also not yet over. However, even without a full narrative conclusion, they did end the show on an arc that was satisfying for what it was, and honestly it gives me the break that I need to mentally recover from whatever the plot has awaiting our characters next. This show is my Anime of the Year by far and I will recommend it to anyone who asks. So please, go watch it if you can, and I am not sorry about the state of your emotions afterwards.
And that’s it for 2017. Sorry if your favourite anime didn’t make the cut or if you think something was far more noteworthy than anything I mentioned. Hell, this year has twice the recommendations compared to the last two years of lists that I’ve done, and that’s not even including the Honourable Mentions. 2017 was a good year. Perhaps not a great year or the best year, but it was no slouch, and 2018 has some interesting shoes to fill. So, as 2017 has ended and the new seasons of 2018 have begun, I hope for a year that was at least as good as, if not better than, the last. And I hope for all the joy that it’ll bring us.
Until then – ladies, gentlemen, and others – stay frosty.
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